Review : Jhoom barabar jhoom

Rating : Above average(3.6/5)
Genre : Romance
Year : 2007
Running time : 2 hrs and 10 minutes
Director : Shaad Ali Sehgal
Cast : Abhishek Bachhan, Preiti Zinta, Lara Dutta, Bobby Deol, Amitabh Bachchan, Ameet Chana, Meera Syal, Sanjeev Bhaskar

JHOOM-BARABAR-JHOOM : LITTLE STORY, LOT’S OF JHOOM !

You know the kind of films which tread a fine line between mind-blowingly genius-y and outrageously loopy ? This is one of them. Shaad Ali Sehgal once again goes out on a limb to bring to you, the most off-the-wallish-zany Hindi film of the year.It starts off without a story – even at my kindest best I cannot quite call a meeting of two yarn-spinners a story – but (watch-out matey !) develops into a fairly entertaining film. I definitely got my money’s worth.

I categorize it as a romance, although the romance is kind of round-about. Sure, it has bits where it’s a musical, and it’s got drama, and there are times when you think you have been transported to the land of the pastiche surreal, but at it’s weirdly loopy core JBJ is all about amore.

So, you have a bonafide Punjabi lout Rikki Thukral (Abhishek) bumping into a hoity-toity Pakistani-Brit miss Alvira Khan (Preiti), at Waterloo Railway station. Rikki, a wheeler-dealer of sorts, has a self-professed tagline “I got class”. Not only does this Bhatinda-da-puttar spout ungrammatical English, he also sports a cell-phone with a self-deprecating ringtone of “Hello Handsome”. As it happens the two end up sharing a table at a restaurant, and as the reserve lessens, they tell each other their stories of meeting their great loves. Alvira is waiting to meet Steve (Deol), a dashing, rich lawyer, and Rikki is awaiting the French Anaida (Lara). Both trains happen to be late, so the two get ample time to expound on their tales, and you get the first half of the film.

Post-interval, the respective tales end, the trains arrive, and the two must depart to meet their loved ones. However heaving hearts, and much mental hand-wringing is in order here, since an attachment has developed between the two. Neither will admit it ofcourse, so they go their own separate ways . . .

JBJ does not take the traditional route of narration. It starts off as a story-telling session of sorts, develops the hint of a problem towards the middle, really scrambles things up with an extended musical-like performance in the second half, and finally ends with the lead pair in an excruciatingly back-breaking, kissy-kissy pose. And while the first-half could have used some editing – the story-telling got too long, and there was too little happening – Sehgal makes up for it in the second half. The songs which I’d heard before and was not too enthused about, were picturised beautifully (and differently), the “Bol halke-halke” number the best of the lot. From that song onwards, the film started ramping up.

The film starts off with Amitabh (a sutradhar of sorts) in a cowboy-meets-pirate-meets-gypsy costume, dancing away to the lead number. I doubt that anyone save Amitabh could carry off that costume, but he does, and with much aplomb. The colorful clothes (and lots of bling) remain thoughout the film, courtesy designer Aki Narula. Abhishek as Rikki puts in a good performance, exuding a loutishness, mixed in with heartfelt romanticism. He’s egoistic, he lies through his not-so-white teeth, and aspires to be upwardly mobile, but he’s a nice guy all the same. Preiti manages the haughty act quite well as Alvira. And Bobby, who’m I don’t ordinarily like too much, is outstanding as mamma’s boy Satvinder. Lara, who is required to sport a French accent in the first half of the film, and the choicest of Punjabi gaalis in the second, lapses into a Brit. accent at times. When she did remember her French accent, she did it quite well though. Besides that faux pas, she acted fairly decently. All characters try to authenticate their Brit. identities with words like “innit”, “Blimey”, “dodgy”, but to my ear they sounded so very desi-like.

Shaad Ali started out with a fairly traditional film, a good old-fashioned love story – Saathiya. His next film was “Bunty aur Babli” a boisterous romp through aspiring, middle-class India. With JBJ Sahgal stretches our concept of a “desi” film even further, extending it to encompass the masquerade, the pantomime, kitsch, whimsy, the carnival-isque atmosphere. Characters narrate their points-of-view in little asides, a technique I like very much, giving the film a very play-like feel. The emotion in the film is enhanced by seemingly over-wrought special effects (the shattering Superman in the background, the golden-ringleted Steve in slow motion), which seem to press too fine a point, but really differentiate this film from the common herd. Sahgal’s innovation might be hard to swallow at times, but seeing films like JBJ makes me glad that desi directors are at least taking chances.

If I had to draw comparisons, I’d say Sehgals’s technique resembles the treatment of Kunder’s “Jaan-e-man” and the carnival-esque atmosphere of the “Samjho ho hi gaya” number in “Lage raho Munnbhai”, but his is an intensification of the same; an ode to the fantastical drama of everyday lives.