Jawani Jaaneman: Movie Review
Rating: 3/5
Language: Hindi
Cast: Saif Ali Khan
Tabu
Alaya Furniturewala
Director: Nitin Kakkar
Producers: Jackky Bhagnani, Deepshikha Deshmukh, Saif Ali Khan, Jay Shewakramani
Writers: Hussain Dalal & Abbas Dalal (dialogue)
Music: Songs by Gourov-Roshin, Tanishk Bagchi, Prem – Hardeep
Score by Ketan Sodha
Production Company: Pooja Entertainment, Black Knight Films, Northern Lights Films
Cinematographer: Manoj Kumar Khatoi
Editors: Sachinder Vats, Chandan Arora
A clever introductory dance to the popular ‘Ole Ole’ number from the two and half decade old movie ‘Yeh Dillagi’ sets the tone for Saif’s character who has grown older but never grew up.
If the shoe fits they say and the shoe (with cleverly added heels) could not have fit better than for Saif Ali Khan, who has definitely matured as an actor in this movie.
He reprises the role of a footloose, fancy-free, commitment-phobic playboy, as he has done in so many films. But this time around his ‘past is longer than his future’, so he needs reading glasses to read bottle labels and dyes his hair so often that the hairdresser is his friend and confidante.
The first half is fun with Jazz (and his swag) who live in a rented apartment in Hounslow as a Punjabi-spouting, pub-hopping, weight- pumping guy who still goes home for weekly meals with his much sober family.
He uses his trademark moves and lines, successfully on most women, even on a girl who is young enough to be his daughter and finds out that the 21-year-old is really his biological daughter and is pregnant out of wedlock to boot, as the trailers show.
How Jazz is forced to come to terms with reality makes up for the second half of the film and that is where the movie loses its edge. It falls prey to clumsy editing and typical Bollywood ‘masala’ such as Chunkey Pandey’s miraculous recovery from a debilitating stroke, Jazz’s unwelcome advances towards his hairdresser and an unbelievable nappy-changing-grandpa scene.
Tia (Alaya Furniturewala) is very believable as Jazz’s daughter who seeks and shares love with all the people she meets including the landlady in Hounslow. One does wonder how it would have fared if Sara Ali Khan, who had originally been cast for the role, had reprised the role as his reel-life daughter.
Saif didn’t mince words while tweeting that his Love Aaj Kal movie posters were better than that of the sequel in which his daughter Sara plays the leading role. He had earlier admitted that he did not want to really work with Sara as it gets complicated with family adding that he would rather Sara’s career trajectory stay separate from his.
Tabu looks amazing as the hippy, yoga-loving, Vipassana meditating, phone hating mother. But her character turns out to be a flimsy caricature with nary a glimpse of her acting talent.
Tabu’s side-kick, who is the boyfriend and father of Tia’s child, is a casting flop especially next to the strong character portrayal of Tia and feels like a damp squib after all the build-up over his coming from Amsterdam to London.
With a few laugh out loud funny lines and too many club scenes, this coming to age movie is worth a watch mainly for Saif Ali Khan and Alaya.
