Jaane Tu...Ya Jaane Na' - Review

‘Who’s Aamir Khan? Ask the girl next door’ – Hoardings flashing across Mumbai in the summer of 1988 before QSQT was released. 20 years later, Aamir himself could have redone the same while launching his nephew ‘Imraan Khan’ through his own production house. But the tag lines, teasers, and promos were on different lines, not to promote Imraan alone but the movie itself - ‘Jaane tu…Ya Jaane Na’. It may be a bold statement but it would definitely rewrite the history for Bollywood movies, especially in the ‘romantic- light-comedy’ genre. Also it has probably given the Bollywood 2 stars in Imraan and Genelia, a director and lyricist in ‘Abbas’ and another equally capable actor (guess who…?)
The storyline is not a lot different. It’s a closely knit group of six college-going, new-age youths, 3 girls and 3 boys. Jaisingh Rathore (Imraan) is a middle-class, level headed, steady and little bit of out-of-the-place boy in the 21st century (he doesn’t carry a cell phone!). He has been brought up by his mother giving him a daily dose of being non-violent at every juncture of life. He never fights with anyone, instead he likes to resolve most of “pangas” dealing with others in an uncanny friendly way. Aditi (Genelia) always calls him “rats” because of his nature. She is completely opposite of Jai. She always likes to fight for small little things. She is a contemporary ‘Mumbaiyya’ girl. Jai calls her “Myaaw”. And there is Shalini, Mala, Rotulu Bombs, and Jignesh. Rotulu is a typical funny guy and Jignesh hails from a rich family with a heavy ‘Gujju’ accent (read ‘Jinges’). And both of them have better roles to play than just being usual sidekicks. Well everyone cares for others in that group. But Jai and Aditi are very close friends? of each other and share a love-hate relationship between them.
But the story has other multiple aspects to look at: Various relationships such as - between lovers and x-lovers, within the parents, parents and their youthful kids, between siblings, and other aspects such as corrupt system, social values and so on. And the beauty is, it is so wisely woven in the script that none of the character is preaching any values, morale in the movie but it still succeeds in passing on the messages, without making the viewers bored.
One of the strongest relationships came across through Jai and her mother. Jai’s mother Savitri Rathore played by Ratna Pathak Shah is a social activist and comes across situations where she has to fight it out with the system – AKA corrupt inspector Ghorpade (Paresh Rawal). And there’s her husband who keeps popping out of the full-sized poster hanging on the wall of their living room. He is a true ‘Rajput’ and appears in the poster with a big mustache, ornaments and is fully geared with swords et all. The husband is played by the real-life husband, none other than ‘Naseeruddin Shah’. Savitri and her husband keeps on debating about Raj’s upbringing and whether to make him a true Rajput or a non-violent (read timid) guy. Savitri’s scenes with her husband and inspector Ghorpade have come across really well in light hearted mode.
The next one is off-course between Aditi and Jai. They are being friends for all five years in the college. So much so close that Aditi picks up Jai everyday on her way to college. They are spending all the moments during their college life together in that group of six. The real story starts when both of them come to know that they can not meet regularly as the college is over. Hence Aditi invites Jai to meet his father to help him in his business. This scene has really came up very well, when her parents mistook him as their would be ‘son-in-law’. Both Jai and Aditi deny being in love, where everyone including the audience and their parents are already convinced about the same. This is where we start realizing the aptness of the movie title, the tag lines (‘When do you know you are in Love’) and director’s commitment to the script. Here onwards the story takes all the twists and turns where both of them choose the right? girlfriend and boyfriend for each other and to start a new life where they can still be friends, while being married to someone else. There are relationships being developed within this group which are again hovering over the borders of friendship and love and it portrays a lively chemistry between Aditi, Rotulu, Jignesh and Bombs.
The other equally interesting relationship portrayed in the movie is between Aditi and her brother Amit. It’s again having an angle of love-hate relationship. He is shown as an artist (painter) who is seen in the movie with colors applied all over his clothes and body and always carries a little white mouse as his pet. The mouse is his best friend in this world. Amit is aloof, overly possessive of her sister and hates all the friends of hers, especially Jai. The reasons for this are strikingly different and should be ‘felt’ while watching the movie. This guy has acted superbly. He is Smita Patil’s son – Prateik. I knew that Prateik has acted in the movie and was so desperate to find him out from shot#1. I have made every attempt to relate Prateik with the characters like Rotulu and others. But when he made an entry, I was stunned to see the huge resemblance with her mother Smita. He is all Smita’s child in every sense with the same expressive eyes, face and creative presence on the screen. He doesn’t have too much of footage, but makes it one of the memorable characters in the movie.
Abbas Tyrewala lives more than the expectation. He has painted the collage of relationships in a very effective manner without making it melodramatic, still imposing the audience to seriously think about life, and at the same time putting a dash of comedy to ease out the slightest tensions in the movie. The success of the movie is 3-fold, the way a) he has built the story as a Writer, b) narrated as a Script-Writer / thru Dialogues and c) the way he has directed it really makes all the difference. His writing credential include ‘Maqbool’ ‘Main Hoon Naa’ ‘Munnabhai MBBS’ and ‘Chupke Se’. He and the Producer - Mansoor Khan, have driven the others departments of the movie equally well, ‘lighting’ in the movie is one of the prominent aspects. But Abbas has gone beyond all this, while being a lyricist. All the songs in the movie are very well thought of and written to capture the exact mood of the moment and to make the storyline even stronger. A.R. Rehman is at his best while composing all the songs. ‘Pappu’, ‘Aditi’ are already big hits before the movie is launched. But ‘Najare Chura Naa’ is actually a master-piece in terms of audio-visual treat. Like you can’t forget the ‘harmonium’ tunes from ‘Kahenaa Hi Kya’ ( Bombay ), you won’t be able to forget the ‘Mouth-Organ’ played in ‘Najare Chura Naa’. This song has become my personal favorite and can definitely lighten up the gloomy moods at any times. Hats-off to Rehman. (There is a continuity flaw in this song though – Jignesh in one shot during this song, has seen taking off his T-Shirt to get into the lake, but in the next shot he is seen in some other T-shirt in the waters J)
Well there is a surprise in store to add more spice to the comedy. The cameo played by ‘Arbaaz (Bagheera) and Bhallo (Sohail Khan) are distinctly different characters and their roles can more closely be related to one of those in a Hollywood movie. While we see them for the first time, we assume it to be a one-scene cameo, but again Abbas has made very wise use of them by roping them in couple of other screens including the climax.
Genelia has played the role quite well. She has crafted all the shades of her character convincingly and also while delivering the dialogues in Hindi has not shown any accent. Manjiri Fadnis a lookalike of ‘Rimi Sen’ has played the role of ‘Meghana‘ – Jai’s girlfriend. She is another capable Marathi Girl making a promising entry in Bollywood.
The biggest find is however ‘Imraan Khan’. He has a resemblance with the Hollywood actor Joaquin Phoenix (‘The village’) and doesn’t carry the face of typical Bollywood hero. Unlike his uncle, he seems to be a very natural actor and even looks like a spontaneous one too. While seeing him in one of the interviews before the launch of the movie he appeared to be a very calm, less talkative (shy), middle-class boy. He was just enough confident of his work in the movie and was not claiming any big success during this interview. I can recall another such interview of Harman Baweja, before launch of his movie ‘2050’ (ironically both got released on the same day). Harman was talking like a business graduate from ‘ Harvard University ’ and like a Lead Manager doing a road-show for a Global IT/infrastructure ‘IPO’. The movie ‘2050’ was so futuristic that it vanished like a UFO without a trace of it in 2008. Looking at the promos of ‘Kidnap’, which is Imraan’s just second movie he is playing a negative / gray-shaded character and I’d say he has all the courage not to remain a stereotyped chocolate hero. This took his uncle Aamir about a decade to get into a role like ‘Gulaam’ and Shahrukh around 2+ years through ‘Bazigar’ when his first 4-5 films did just well and were not super-hits.
Imraan, Pratiek and Abbas are here to stay and will go a long way in their careers. I’d say the same for Genelia as well, but she might concentrate on movies in South than Bollywood. Net-net it’s a movie that will remain close to our hearts forever, and would definitely revive the similar feelings of famous love stories of our times such as ‘QSQT’ and ‘DDLJ’. But this I’d say is a more contemporary, realistic, less-romantic and more real-life package than these other movies. Also Aamir Khan Productions has given 3 big hits in a row and which is definitely a moment of pride and is making him most successful amongst all the Bollywood Khans.
Looks like the Independence Day ’08 long weekend is turning out good, as I was able to push this review off (Took around 5 hrs over the last few days to complete). Also I’m just returning back watching ‘Bachna Ae Hasseno’ and would rate the movie very high. Everyone including Ranbir, Deepika, Bipasha, Minissha, Hiten Paintal, director Siddhartha Anand and music director ‘Vishal-Shekhar’ have played their parts with clinical ease. The detailed review, some other time….



Yogesh Dixit