Munna Bhai MBBS did well, but did not seem to present any concrete and thought provoking message to the audience. Lago Raho Munna Bhai was a welcome surprise with a rare combination of entertainment, simplicity and purpose. It did just what its predessor fell short of.
Sanjay Dutt suits the role of a Mumbaiya Dada (I would have written "goon", but he was too good to be so). Arshad Warsi has done a commendable job as "Circuit". Vidya Balan too makes a mark with her performance, especially as an RJ, acting to be as irritating as they can be (Remember the "gooooooood mooooorniiiiiing Mumbai" that stared in the morning and ended by the afternoon?).
Unfortunately, few of us remember Gandhi as the one whose figure can be seen on Indian Rupee notes OR the one whose statue stands tall in a few parks and road crossings across the country. Lot of us have little to no knowledge of what Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi did for the country and the world as a whole. This fact was subtly depicted in the movie when Munna Bhai asks Circuit as to who was Gandhi.
The scientific angle of Munna seeing Gandhi as a result of him spending 3 days without a break reading literature on Gandhi, has been depicted well. The concept of hallucination has been used to the advantage of the plot.
There are several comical angles throughout the movie too. Circuit is once asked to escort Gandhi home on a taxi by Munna. On another occassion, Munna’s goon colleagues pose as students and faculty in the college where Munna pretends to be a professor. And how could one forget the scenes that Boman Irani shared with Sanjay Dutt. He lived up the image of the iconised "Mamu". I hope the poor soul is not referred to by the same name in reality by miscreants. There was a subtle take on Ekta Kapoor’s love with redefining spellings when Khurana was shown to have changed the spelling of his surname to Kkhurana on the suggestion of a spherical astrologer.And yes there was some addition to our General Knowledge too - the human body has 206 bones while intact.
The music is good too. Songs like "Pal pal pal" and "Bande Mein tha dum" are catchy. Others are soothing as well.
Well, there would be very few sequels that stand taller than their previous versions. Lage Raho Munna Bhai is definately one of them. It is a complete family entertainer that reinforces Mahatma Gandhi’s principles of non voilence. I would classify this one as a timeless classic.
It is a movie worth watching.