Jayeshbhai Jordaar, Ranveer’s Incomparable Energy Fuels The Social Comedy

Jayeshbhai Jordaar

Starring Ranveer Singh, Shalini Pandey,Boman Irani, Ratna Pathak Shah, Jia Vaidya

Directed by  Divyang Thakkar

Rating: **

There is  so much that this well-intended well-targeted  misfire could have done with the theme of female foeticide, if only it did not allow itself to be bogged down by unnecessarily  goofy chase sequences and lengthy monologues on how important a  ‘Pappi’(kiss) is to humanity.

That’s where Ranveer  Singh,bright  bubbly and bouncy, lost me . His  big monologue on the  kiss is a total miss , and  if I were this film’s director I would  immediately remove  it  from the  narrative before its causes more damage to what could have been a sparkling satire on  gender  politics.

Jayeshbhai Jordar is a  mixed bag.It’s messy but not unlikeable. It is  at times enormously endearing especially when the  softhearted  Jayesh is shown in the company of his  wife(Shalini  Pandey) and  his livewire daughter(Jia Vaidya).

Then his  villainous father, played with  lipsmacking relish  by Boman Irani, jumps into the plot like an elephant in a swimmingpool. His highly unwelcome  attention towards Jayesh’s unborn child  impels  Jayesh, his wife and daughter to flee their Gujarati village into a Utopian  hamlet in Haryana where girl children are welcomed with  open arms.By the time  Gujarat meets Haryana the  plot is busy scaling summits of stupidity in what  turns out to be  a sadly lost cause.

 The  fantasy element paints the  narrative’s midriff with a riot of  mismatched colours, some so loud it’s like watching a Gujarati street play, other so absurd you wonder about the blunder. How  could  the team so  in the spirit of the theme initially,get so mired in chaos?!

Regrettably Ranveer’s  adrenaline  rush is  unable to  hold the road trip  together. Ranveer and his screen family do look like  a real family. If only they had more meat to chew on in this bland vegetarian misfire where  a kiss is  considered a liberating act  and the goons seem  unsure of what  they are meant to do with their  restless mojo.Maybe kiss one another?

Nonetheless some of  the  scenes  especially  in the first-half are genuinely heartwarming and funny. Ranveer constructs  a convincing graph for his timid character. Sadly the  screenplay doesn’t support his enthusiasm. After a point  you feel  the  film isn’t going anywhere. It seems happy to simply go around in circles.

 Ranveer’s  body language and the spoken Gujarati diction are impressively in-character. From the rest  of the cast , Boman Irani and Ratna  Pathak Shah are expectably attuned to the satirical mood. Ratna Pathak Shah could have done with more space to exhale her  grace. But the film seems  to in a race with itself to cover the entire gamut of gender-discrimination emotions.

 It’s like a rollercoast  ride where the   one manning the ride has fallen asleep.