The new movie starring Hareem Farooq, Faysal Quraishi and Shamoon Abbasi had all the makings of a great film but fell flat.
19 Oct, 2026
A good movie, even a passable one, should give you something to take home. It could be a story that stays with you, characters you grow fond of, a laugh you did not see coming, or two hours of entertainment that leave you feeling your time and money was well spent. I may not be an expert on Punjabi cinema, but I have watched enough movies to sit down and finally give this one a piece of my mind.
Some movies waste your time; others steal your soul, hold it for two hours, and hand it back slightly bruised. Produced by Hameem Productions, Mango Jutt does not tell a story. Instead, it dares you to look away.
An aam plot
Murad Jutt (played by Faysal Quraishi) is a police officer who has not taken a day off until he receives a call from his sister, Mariam (Ayesha Jahanzeb), in Lahore. She breaks the news of her husband’s passing and asks her brother to babysit her three children while she travels to Dubai for work in a few days.
While Murad is in Lahore, his boss (Aijaz Aslam) asks him to track down a major criminal with several cases against him. The catch is that Murad must go undercover. He becomes an aam aadmi (common man), or, as he puts it, an “aam Jutt”, hence the name of the movie, Mango Jutt.
The school is informed of Mariam’s trip, and the principal, Noor Jehan (Hareem Farooq), is asked to keep an eye on the children’s work and behaviour. Noor also happens to be Mariam’s friend. As Murad picks up and drops off the children at school, the two leads spark a typically Punjabi romance.
Meanwhile, Mariam’s late husband’s business partner is plotting to take over the entire business and planning to kidnap the children for ransom. With action, dance, drama and romance all lined up, the film checks the familiar boxes. The problem is that checking boxes does not automatically make a story work.
I went in with my friend with zero expectations. As we sat through the film, she whispered, “Wait for the Punjabi climax song.” Ten minutes later, we were watching Farooq and Quraishi dancing to ‘Ankhan Wich’. Then she whispered that the villain would enter. Of course, he came. Then she whispered that there would be a fight sequence. Of course, there was one.
What I mean to say is that it was a predictable film.
Songs, loose ends and unnecessary lectures
The movie is punctuated with music at random. For instance, ‘Ankhan Wich’ begins at a mela, which I could not figure out how or why had begun because there was no occasion for it. The film also carries side tales that did not need to be there. There is no clear beginning or end to how the kidnapper discovers that Murad is working undercover, leaving an important plot point hanging.
Then there are the randomly placed dialogues that do little to further the storyline. The unnecessarily preachy speech the eldest daughter delivers at the end, glorifying her mother and mamu, is one example. Another is the scene in which the film tries to prove its Punjabiat through a mother complaining that a child speaks Punjabi and sings in the same language at the elite school. It is unnecessary, adds nothing to the plot and feels particularly misplaced in a story that is already rather haphazard.
On the technical side, the dubbing could have been done better, too.
Shamoon Abbsi, Quraishi and Farooq are all fantastic actors and their mastery of their craft shines through individually. Quraishi and Farooq have the chemistry and screen presence to carry a film. Yet, even their stardom could not save Mango Jutt when the story itself had so little to offer.
Entertainment for the masses
Mango Jutt may be neither the best Punjabi film I have watched nor the funniest film of all time. What it is, however, is a film made for the entertainment of the masses.
Perhaps the film misses the need for single-screen cinemas, where a familiar plot, a few songs, some romance and a fight sequence can make for a good evening out. But there is a difference between making an accessible film and assuming that a predictable collection of scenes will be enough. The audience can see the villain coming, anticipate the fight and guess when the song will begin. What it cannot do is supply the story the film has failed to tell.
Mango Jutt has actors who can act, a romance that could have worked and all the ingredients of a crowd pleaser — it simply needed a tighter script to bring them together. Sometimes, even a passable movie needs to do more than show up with all the expected ingredients.
