An Above Average Film with Some Amazing Performances

By Avik Basak

It has been a long wait since Anurag Basu and Ranbir Kapoor’s debut production, Jagga Jasoos was announced and many were even questioning if the project was shelved. Anyways, this dream project of Basu finally found its way into the theatres last weekend and the long wait would have been justified if they could have brought us a sensational end product, which unfortunately is not the case here. That does not mean it is a bad movie; Jagga Jasoos is light, breezy and provides you with a feel good experience but at the same time is flawed, a bit sloppy and overlong at nearly 2 hours and 42 minutes.

It chronicles the story of a young boy, Jagga, who has the natural talent of solving mysteries, and his search for his missing foster father who is connected to a big conspiracy. Jagga stammers while speaking and instead likes to sing his lines, a trade he has learned from his old man, hence opening the scope of making the film a musical. The movie works very well in the first half, making us wonder what will come next, but somehow loses its way in the second and becomes sluggish.

Ranbir is in great form here and he gets good support from his leading lady, Katrina, who proves once again how much she has improved as an actress in the recent years. The other supporting players, such as Saswata Chatterjee as Jagga’s father, Rajatava Dutta as the police officer in Jagga’s village and Saurabh Shukla as the menacing Ex-IB officer also were amazing in their parts to make the movie worth watching.

Anurag does quite well in mixing music in the narrative of this adventure comedy but the problem is that he tries to do a little too much. As a result, he is able to give us some extremely well-crafted scenes instead of a memorable movie. Some of the set pieces towards the end do not feel as compelling as they should have been and most importantly, the emotional bit is not maintained as things start to seem too convenient. Logic is off the charts from the very beginning which works pretty well at first but as the movie moves forward towards its culmination, some of the things become too dull to digest.

The movie is well shot by Ravi Verman and does not let you take your eyes off the picturesque frames it provides you with. The musical part was amazing and Pritam does some of his best works on this movie to give it a new dimension that it deserved, but the same cannot be said about the editors Ajay Sharma and Akiv Ali who are untidy with their scissors and should have prevented some unnecessary scenes, which are there around the starting of the second half, from making it into the final cut.

Overall, Jagga Jasoos is an above average film that deserves a watch because of its amazing performances and some hilarious scenes. It is a bold attempt at making a proper musical film, which is rare in Bollywood, but the execution should have been a lot better. Once again Basu takes inspiration from some classic characters of the pop culture, such as Tintin, Harry Potter and Indiana Jones that make the movie a nice watch for a geek.

2.8 Stars Out of 5 From Me...