‘Jayeshbhai Jordaar’ movie review: Ranveer Singh holds afloat this spirited, well-meaning tale

Sandwiching a serious issue between loafs of laughter is not new in Hindi cinema. In Jayeshbhai Jordaar, director Divyang Thakkar explores the Hirani-esque space and comes up with a jolly good ride around the theme of female foeticide. The ride has its share of hiccups, but the director doesn’t throw away the intrinsic logic out of the window.

Not essentially meant for those who want their cinema to be subtle, it caters to those who have grown up with  Balika Vadhu on general entertainment channels and are making a transition to OTT plaforms with  Gullak and  Home Shanti kind of content.

Jayesh (Ranveer Singh) is the kind of boy who doesn’t know what feminism is all about, but has his heart in the right place. We find plenty of such characters in the hinterland who cannot counter the atavistic mindset of their parents, but aren’t able to perpetuate them either. For them, life becomes a charade; a balancing act between two generations. Thakkar paints this parody of life with a broad brush, but eventually, it yields diminishing returns.

Jayesh’s fearsome father Pruthvish (Boman Irani) and forlorn mother Jasoda (Ratna Pathak Shah) are busy perpetuating patriarchy in a fictitious village in Gujarat. They want a grandson to carry forward the name of their clan, and don’t think twice before eliminating any decisive X chromosome that comes in the way of their desire. 

Prthuvish is shown as a late entry into the league of aging crackpots in the Khaps of western Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. Like the rest of them, he holds the women responsible for the surge in male hormones and seeks to push them behind every possible veil.

When Jayesh discovers that his wife Mudra (Shalini Pandey) is pregnant with their second daughter, he decides to run away from his heir-seeking father and his acolytes. The build-up evokes curiosity mixed with humour, but as the cat-and-mouse game begins, the theatrical underlining of the narrative becomes apparent. 

It starts feeling like a series of skits on women empowerment that would work well on a street corner. Some of them have a strong emotional appeal that makes you laugh and ponder at the same time, but others are juvenile and dated.

The scene where Jayesh’s sister gets even with her insufferable husband by slapping him when he is unconscious is one example where Divyang gets the blend of mirth and message in the right proportion. Jayesh trying to slice off his male organ to thwart the attempts of his father also strikes the right chord.

However, the young director gets carried away when he tries to juxtapose Gujarat’s today with Haryana’s past, in terms of the impact of female infanticide. It might have sounded hilarious on paper, but doesn’t translate to screen. The film has only two hours of running time but still, some of the scenes seem stretched beyond their potential. The crucial pappi (kiss) scene where Jayesh underlines the importance of seeing women as more than just wombs, is one such example.

It is left to Ranveer to fill in the gaps with his performance and he doesn’t disappoint. Jayesh is not an easy character to fit into; his heroism is lying buried beneath his social conditioning and fear of his father’s position. But Ranveer brings out Jayesh’s insecurities and courage without disrupting the tone of the film, and once again becomes the character after hanging the vanity in the cupboard. He shows how one could be nuanced in a loud atmosphere.

Boman is not bad either. In some of the important scenes, he evokes tangible fear before turning into a big bear whom you want to hug. Jia Vaidya as the daughter Siddhi does justice to a well-written part of today’s Internet-connected child. Ratna doesn’t have much to do other than provide the reason behind Jayesh’s spirit.

It is the kind of film that won’t make you queue up at the box office, but will keep you awake on a Sunday afternoon when Jayeshbhai comes to the living room.

Jayeshbhai Jordaar is currently running in theatres