‘Jolly LLB 3’ movie review: Farmer gets a hearing in Bollywood as Subhash Kapoor blends mirth with message in this potent courtroom drama starring Akshay Kumar and Arshad Warsi

When the invisible claws of censorship begin to throttle creativity, filmmakers either conform or subvert. This week, Subhash Kapoor, who has mastered the art of sugar coating the bitter pill with satire, rewinds to the farmer agitation against land acquisition in Greater Noida’s Bhatta Parsaul in 2011 that changed the course of discourse of politics of development to drive his Jolly LLB franchise forward.

Kapoor relocates the source of the story from Uttar Pradesh to Rajasthan, but its soul echoes with the farmer’s distress across the region. Here is a film that puts the farmer at the centre of the narrative; here is a story that prioritises the spirit of the law over its letter, delivering a message that underscores the need for an equitable distribution of wealth.

Rajaram, a marginal farmer and a poet in Parsaul village in Bikaner, ends his life after the system cheats him to serve the interests of a real estate magnate, Khetan (Gajraj Rao). When his widow Janaki (Seema Biswas) seeks legal support through an NGO, she approaches two Jolly good advocates (Arshad Warsi and Akshay Kumar) that Kapoor created in the first two instalments. The two might not be well-versed in the language of the law, but they have the grit and spirit to take on the mighty. The connection is organic, and the expression is kinetic.

Though he bats for the farmer’s interest, Kapoor, like an old-school journalist, keeps space for opposing points of view in his reportage. He articulates the capitalist’s concerns about our Gandhian guilt regarding the accumulation of wealth. In Gajraj Rao, Kapoor has a fine actor to deliver the corporate complex. The film counters the demonisation of NGOs by exposing the think tank culture where subservience to corporate interests raises a stink.

Of course, the tone becomes one-sided after a point., of course, it puts the case of landed farmers and keeps the farm workers, who proved to be the real capital of the politician-corporate nexus, out of the picture, but in the realm of mainstream entertainer, Kapoor once again punches above the genre’s weight to say that in the social contract there can’t be separate clauses for the haves and have not’s.

Having said that, the franchise cinema comes with its pitfalls. One has to serve the expectations and image built over the last two instalments. There is little room for experimentation with the structure. It becomes a handicap because the space is no longer a novelty. The audience now has Maamla Legal Hai to celebrate and Guilty Minds to look up to. Kapoor submits to a pattern: set the stage and switch to courtroom dialogue that becomes increasingly preachy as the case progresses.

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By switching from Arshad to Akshay, Kapoor had raised the commercial value of the venture. The pitch had become louder, but his voice became a bit feeble. Here, he tries to strike a balance between the two stools, and the effort shows. Akshay has submitted himself to the script, but one can still see the set pieces being inserted to keep the star’s fans fawning. The initial attrition between the two Jollys gets repetitive and even irksome after a point.

Once again, Saurabh Shukla is the biggest star of the show as he keeps the franchise fresh. His Judge Tripathi has already become one of the iconic characters of Hindi cinema. In the third instalment, Shukla adds a few more nuances to his performance as Tripathi discovers a new meaning of date. Meanwhile, you keep a date with this hearing to understand the plight of the peasant.

Jolly LLB 3 is currently running in theatres.