Jabariya Jodi Review: Wonder What The Film Wanted To Convey With Its Hapzhazard Plotline

Movie: Jabariya Jodi

Actors: Sidharth Malhotra, Parineeti Chopra, Aparshakti Khurana, Sanjay Mishra

Director: Prashant Singh

Rated: 2 out of 5

My Verdict: The money that has been used to make the film could have been put to better uses! 

The film is based on the now obsolete custom of Pakadwa Vivah where an eligible groom used to be kidnapped at gunpoint and was forced to get married to girls whose parents didn’t have the cash flow to pay a huge dowry! In the film, Sidharth Malhotra plays a Patna based goon Abhay Singh, whose job is to kidnap men and get them forcefully married. Mind you, it is his father Hukum Singh played by Javed Jaffery who brainwashes him into thinking that he is indeed doing one of the most sacrosanct jobs on the surface of this earth! Everything comes to a grinding halt when Babli (Parineeti Chopra) who also happens to be Abhay’s childhood love crosses path and he starts liking him and then the same old Borrrringg love story ensues. There is barely anything in the film. The film is a serious case of haphazard writing and pathetic direction!

First things first – Everything looks forced! Jabariya!! So much so, that you keep exclaiming to yourself, what is happening, man?! Ei Kaa Hot Hai Babhua? Aisan Bhi Hot Hai Kaa? I mean, we are talking Bihar and one crucial song that is there to set the mood, is in Punjabi! Really? Thankfully another Punjabi number remixed by the one and the only the official remix king of Bollywood – Tanishk Bagchi ‘Khadke Gilasi’ is not there in the film! What a relief!

When we talk about performances, Sidharth Malhotra for some strange reason looks comfortable in the skin of his character but falters when it comes to the body language and the Bihari diction. It sounds fake! Jabariya Diction! And what’s with the clothes he is wearing? I mean, show me one Bihari lad (in Bihar) wearing crisp white denim pants, multi-coloured and patterned shirts and not to forget that gelled hair! And at the same time the stereotypical paan-stained lips and the ever-present ‘Gamcha.’ Sidharth tries really hard though!

Coming to Parineeti Chopra – she has been playing the fiesty motor-mouth girl in almost all her films and this film too she plays a girl who is cheeky and audacious and is ready to go to any length to get what she wants! Well, this is just for the first half. In the second half, wonder what happens to her strength of character, she is forever crying and sulking like forever and ever! This sudden change in the characteristic after the interval is not just off-putting but it is also very obnoxious, much more than her red hair! Chopra needs to get her act together. Javed Jaffery has just messed up the diction. He sounds so damn funny in that fake Bihari accent that he puts on, keeping that aside, he has put out a fairly believable performance. The best part of the film was none other than Sanjay Mishra who plays Babli’s father. Sanjay just shines in the film because he plays a character whose idiosyncrasies, he is well aware of precisely because he has been born and brought up in the same milieu. His sleepwalking scenes are just hilarious! Everyone else in the film doesn’t really have much to do and neither they are given much screen time and hence it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to state that they don’t even count!

It is best if I keep the music out of the review because it is just soulless. The costumes are more than overdone, the direction goes haywire, the cinematography has nothing to boast of, the writing is bad – this is reflected even more when instead of establishing the backdrop of Bihar in pictures, the film does it through dialogues! What’s more, the film is replete with tongue-in-cheek oneliners that do extract laughter (at times) but then it is just overdone! All in all, the money that has been used to make the film could have been put to better uses!