By Neha Bora
Generally I review or even simply decide how I feel about a film based on the premise that the film wanted to be good. The director wanted to tell a compelling story, the artists wanted to create good work. But, don’t be fooled dear audiences, Jabariya Jodi, by Prashant Singh, has no such ‘Jabariya’ ambitions.
It is an average story of a rowdy young man, Abhay Singh, places his ambition ( ‘kursi’ ) before the girl ( reduced to ‘sex’ or ‘bistar’) while at the same time kidnapping men seeking dowry and getting them forcefully married (Jabariya Shaadi) to the woman whose family has paid for the groom.
The story is also about rowdy young girl, Babli Yadav ( although you will not know her profession or qualification even after the end) who has no ambition other than getting married ( you might know her from all of Parineeti Chopra’s films before.)
Notice, that I do not mention the practice of ‘Jabariya Shaadi’ above, because even though the film claims to be based on the concept, it never once tried to explore the practice and it’s consequences.
Jabariya Jodi is a badly written film, where none of what happens is happening for any other reason other than the fact that someone wrote it that way. It looks like Sanjeev Jha took stereotypes of every kind and churned this script.
The men of this film are controlling and morally unstable who take what they want and when they cannot they are failures. The only two women characters are ambitionless except in respect to their relationship to the men in their lives.
This film tries to be a comedy and like most hindi comedies fails to be so without being sexist, racist, and insensitive.
It places it’s modernism in unnecessary places like in between a song of separation and sadness, where, in a still shot, Abhay preaches gender equality.
Even after the film poster clearly shouted it’s Bihari nature with the ‘maar bilawa ke’ slogan in the background, not once, during the entire film do I feel like the story takes place in Bihar.
The DoP doesn’t make the effort, the costume doesn’t make the effort, and most of the actors have definitely not even tried.
The music is also average with on cue falling-in-love songs, separation songs and of course the mandatory rap/remix at the end which I have come to dread in the extreme.
There is also a ‘Jilla Hille La’ remix at the beginning which might not be more but definitely as annoying as the original.
The performances are average to bad with only two actually good performances. Let’s start with he bad and make our way up!
Parineeti Chopra plays the same, fantasy girl with a tough persona and a soft heart. She does nothing that u haven’t seen in ‘Ishaqzaade’ or ‘Suddh Desi Romance’ or ‘Hasee Toh Phasee’.
Siddharth Malhotra does more of the same too, with a little try at bad comedy. Both the actors have been part of the industry for some years now, and both of them are still doing what they were doing then.
Sid in Student Of The Year was a good looking jock who finds it difficult to express his feelings,and in Jabariya Jodi, he is a good looking thug who finds it difficult to express his feelings.
Parineeti was an electric small town girl who loved and over looked her lovers obvious faults in Ladies v/s Ricky Bahl and she is a small town girl who loves Abhay despite his total disregard for her self respect.
Javed Jeffrey is an all time personal favourite but doesn’t do much in the movie because he has been written into a bad character in a bad script. Sheeba Chaddha is a most talented artist but has been rendered almost mute and insignificant in the film.
Sandeep Mishra is the only relief in the other wise dragged film. He is convincing both as a father of a rebellious violent daughter and as a middle class professor from Bihar. He is excellent and under-used as always.
Aparshakti Khurana, ‘tera time aayega’ because you are so easy to watch and believe and you got people noticing and fan base slowly building up.
This film was probably supposed to be a fun romantic comedy with a little social message to deliver.
Comedy comes from understanding the society that you eventually want to amuse at the exposing their own shortcomings, hence it requires clever writing which Jabariya Jodi isn’t. The romance was killed by Parineeti and Siddharth and the, unseemly choices they make about their lives.
The social message can only ever be delivered evenly slightly when it is at the core of the narrative, if not focus, but ‘Jabariya Jodi’ is disrespectful to all those men and women who have had terrible experiences with the ‘Dowry’ custom or the practice of ‘Jabariya Shaadi’. Don’t forget to subscribe to Filmi Files on facebook for latest gossip going on in Tinsel Town.
FF Rating: **
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