A lot of Singhs, but very little Disco.

Critics hated Disco Singh (2014) , but it was a huge hit with audiences, breaking box office records for a Punjabi movie.  and it' easy to see why.  It's not a deep movie, it's certainly not a subtle movie, but it tries very hard to be an entertaining movie.

Don Bhupinder Singh (Manoj Pahwa) is having a rough week.  Sure, he's rich and powerful, with plenty of guns and a fancy car and a band of dubiously competent henchmen, but he was given his position as the city's crimelord by his father-in-law, and his wife Pammi (Upasana Singh) won't let him forget it for a second.  It's gotten so bad that even the people he's murdering keep calling him henpecked.  However, Bhupinder is distracted by his crush on supermodel Sweety (Surveen Chawla), and he has a plan to meet her at last.  A friend's son is getting married, and he arranges an invitation for Sweety.  She attends, he gets to meet her, and everything is great.

Unfortunately, someone took a picture of Bhupinder and Sweety together, and the photo is published in the newspaper.  Pammi is livid when she sees the picture, and Bhupinder has to think fast.  Fortunately, there's someone else in the photo, wedding band leader Lattu Singh (Diljit Dosanjh), professionally known as "Disco Singh."  He tells Pammi that Lattu is Sweety's boyfriend, and it's a simple matter to kidnap both Lattu and Sweety and force them to pretend to be a couple, at least until the detective Pammi hired (Chandan Prabhakar) accepts the story and gives up.

Sweety is furious; she only met Bhupinder once, and she has no intention of becoming his girlfriend, let alone dating a random musician in order to protect a nonexistent relationship.  On the other hand, it's literally a dream come true for Lattu.  He's been a devoted fan of Sweety's for years, and he's just happy to be near her.

Bhupinder tends to micromanage his hostages.  At first he insists that Lattu and Sweety stay four feet apart at all times, and Lattu carries a tape measure just to be sure.  That's not enough to fool the detective, so Bhupinder changes the rules; lattu and Sweety have to hold hands and smile at each other.  That's still not good enough, so Bhupinder insists on a public kiss, though it has to be a chaste one.

And it's the kiss that changes the relationship.  or rather, the lack of a kiss.  Lattu may be a disturbingly devoted fan, but he's also a good guy, and he's not going to force a kiss on a woman who isn't willing.  He brings her to his office so they can pretend to kiss behind closed doors, and after the obligatory misunderstanding she realizes that Lattu may be really annoying, but he's also a decent person.  She starts warming up to him, and they begin to grow closer.

However, Sweety isn't Lattu's only potential love interest.  He keeps saving Priya (Apoorva Arora) from the same gang of thugs, and while Sweety is slowly warming up to him, Priya is immediately smitten, so much so that she starts seeking out the thugs and asking them to harass her.  

And then the detective is finally convinced that the relationship between Lattu and Sweety is real.  He tells Pammi, and the game is over.  Lattu is free to go, as long as he never goes near Sweety again.  Of course Lattu isn't going to give up on his dream that easily, but he's missing some vitally important information

The plot of Disco Singh is similar to 1997's Yes Boss, starring Juhi Chawla and Shah Rukh Khan, but it's really a remake of the 2009 farce Do Knot Disturb, which was written and directed by my nemesis, David Dhawan.  This is a broad farce, in other words, so rather than an examination of societal double standards surrounding relationships you get Twenty One (B. N. Sharma) and Twenty Two (Karamjit Anmol), two incompetent henchmen who keep forgetting the dead body in the trunk of their car.  Twenty One and Twenty Two wear identical white suits, but they're easy to tell apart because Twenty One is the camp one.)  

Farce can be okay, though, and while Twenty One and Twenty Two aren't funny, the running gag involving another of Bhupinder's thugs (Deedar Gill) repeatedly getting shot in the backside wore me down through repetition.

As for the leads, Diljit Dosanjh and Surveen Chawla are both affable and charming.  I don't buy their relationship for a minute, but I'm not sure that matters.