Review : Jayeshbhai Jordaar : Abortive!
Prenatal sex determination was banned in India in 1994, under the #PreConception and #PreNatalDiagnosticTechniquesAct. It’s an offence and quite a few arrests have been made for flouting the same. But the one-line of #YRFFilm’s #JayeshbhaiJoridaar is pre natal determination and subsequent happenings in a small town of #Gujarat. The concept is good but the writing and direction takes a beating thus aborting the entertainment from the film. No doubt the lead actor #RanveerSingh tries hard to salvage the weak writing but is unable to. In recent times viewers expect novel subjects and interesting presentation in hindi films. The run of the mill stories are booted out by them and even big superstar’s films could not survive at the box office for weak stories.
Jayeshbhai Patel (Ranveer Singh) is a middle class guy living under the thumb of dominating parents. He is married to Mudra (Shalini Pandey) as an exchange offer as his sister is married to Shalini’s brother. Ramlal Patel (Boman Irani), who is a Sarpanch of the village and his wife Anuradha Patel (Ratna Pathak Shah) want their ‘bahu’ to deliver a ‘waris’ for their ‘khandaan’. Jayesh and Mudra has one daughter and wanting to have a son to fulfil parental wish already have experienced six abortions. Mudra is pregnant again and Jayeshbhai gets a message ‘Jai Mata Di’, meaning a girl will be born. To avoid the plight of his wife and fed up of his parent’s dominance he wants to shrug it off and wants Mudra to go ahead with the pregnancy. Their 9 year daughter Siddhi (Jia Vaidya) is a tech-savvy kid and helps her parents in their endeavour. To avoid the wrath of the family and the entire village Jayeshbhai decides to run away to Landopur village in Haryana which is devoid of girls (due to foeticide determination). This town of wrestlers play an important role in Jayeshbhai’s life and of course the storyline. After unsuccessful non-humorous comedy scenes and melodramatic dialogues, Jayeshbhai’s ‘Jordaar-ness’ falls flat.
As mentioned earlier the concept is good but the execution is half baked. These kind of stories are part of crime shows on the small screen and here because of uninteresting narration it fails to entertain. The screenplay is unimaginative as a lot of cliched stuff is packed in it. The sad part is that the scenes which are supposed to make audience laugh fail to do so and during a serious scene laughter pops up. The writer (and the director Divyang Thakkar) looks confused as to where his script is landing. The first half is lazy but the second half is pacy as compared to the first one. Editing is good so is the production value. Music is passable.
Ranveer Singh is full of energy once again and he tries to make audience laugh, cry and get serious with his dramatic speech. He has balanced his performance very well but can’t salvage the film. Shalini Pandey (who played Preeti in Arjun Pandey) is impressive in parts. She too becomes a victim of the writing as her character doesn’t get elevated beyond a certain point. Boman Irani and Ratna Pathak Shah are brilliant actors and play their part as per the requirement. But the director should have used their talent to up the scenes. Child actor Jia Vaidya portrays her character beautifully and her spontaneity and expressions are impressive.
If you want to enjoy the air conditioning in a theatre, go watch Jayeshbhai Jordaar which can be described as abortive.
Rating: **1/2