After 'Youngistaan', where we discovered the actual acting chops from Jackky Bhagnani, he decided to experiment with the most difficult genre ever, and that is 'Comedy'. Well experimenting is not bad, if the screenplay evokes laughter in the audience, tickles their funny bone, till they die laughing. But you'll get to know about the result of the movie, 'Welcome 2 Karachi', which is by the way the second pairing of Arshad-Jackky duo and second directorial of 'Khiladi 786' fame Ashish R. Mohan.
The plot being inspired from 'Harold & Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay' and the gags inspired from 'Dumb & Dumber', the film is about the two dimwits (Jackky Bhagnani & Arshad Warsi), who try to go to the United States of America, using the sea-route, illegally, after the former one (Jackky) being repeatedly denied visa by the American Embassy, and the latter one (Arshad) being sacked from his Naval- officer duty. Due to a storm on the sea, the boat lands on the shores of Pakistan. What follows from here is chaos, chaos and nothing but chaos.
The plot had so much potential, but the writers (Vrajesh Hirjee, Ashish R. Mohan, Kushal Ved Bakshi and Danish Hussain) clearly rely on juvenile jokes, from the ones involving fart to the word f****r, which sparsely evokes giggles. And they are often repeated. The 'ban' joke, as well as the fake Muslim names by the protagonists were quite hilarious, these scenes left me in splits, but before and after that, each and every one-liner or a gag left me giggled or were just unfunny. Direction (Ashish R. Mohan) focuses on action scenes more than the comedic moments. Moreover, the second half is more unfunny than the first one, and on top of that the shoddy VFX plays a spoilsport. Music (Jeet Ganguly, Rochak Kohli and Amjad Nadeem) is just ignorable, except for 'Chal Bhaag', which justifies one of the situations of the film. Background score is just plain average. Editing (Steven Bernard) is disappointingly average, from the master editor of many Rohit Shetty movies. Cinematography (Mark Nutkins) is again, average. Choreography (Bosco-Caesar, F. A. Khan and Brinda) is nothing special.
Off the cast, Jackky Bhagnani stereotypes Gujaratis badly. He evokes sparse giggles, yes, but this time he hams, instead of acting. Arshad Warsi, though tried to carry the whole movie on his shoulders, was badly wasted, so was Lauren Gottlieb. Rest of the cast just overact a lot.
On the whole, 'Welcome 2 Karachi' just overstays its welcome. After a promising trailer, we thought it might tickle our funny bone for good, but, it left us disappointed and cheated. It is not another 'Filmistaan' or another 'Tere Bin Laden'. It's just plain boring, though intermittently funny. I go with a three out of ten rating.