Jagga Jasoos: An uncontrolled experiment

When I was a kid, participating in elocution competitions was kinda cool. You had to speak about global warming and India after independence, which thanks to my competitive parents, wasn’t a tough thing to conceptualize about. I just had to mug up those long pages. My teachers were very appreciative of my efforts, but it didn’t take them a while in recognizing who had stayed up late to prepare for my words. I used to wonder how they’d catch me, considering the fact that I’d stage the speeches so well. Today after watching Jagga Jasoos, I understood why.

I might sound too harsh, because for once I do accept that this is a comic book superhero, imperfect, bumbling and yet one who has tremendous stamina when jumping off running trains and tall walls to defy its super villain. And that Ranbir pulls off brilliantly (except the overdone stammering, yes). The movie asks you to not take itself very seriously, right from the “pictureshuru” (Oh yeah, Barfi again!).

The first half is tightly woven and unfolds in a creatively unique (possibly) manner, with the narrative set like a collection of short stories. The jokes land well and Amitabh Bhattacharya’s lyrics engage you. Pritam’s work is commendable. But I’ll have to divide the music pieces in two halves- the ones which actually contribute to the musical storytelling and others which remind you that this is only a Bollywood movie after all. Seriously, ‘Galti se mistake” is from where the movie really faltered for me.

The art direction and cinematography share the same fate- they are brilliant for the first half; not just because they are beautifully framed (Basu’s no Wes Anderson though), but because collaboratively they achieve something more. This has to be one of S. Ravi Varman’s best in Bollywood so far. Parijat Poddar is magical in painting the mise-en-scene. It reassured me that cinema is essentially an affair meant to be savoured on the big screen.

The second half answers my childhood query, and yeah doesn’t forget to spoil all the effort of the first half. Basu gets busy in showing off his sets, and tries to wrap up too much too quickly. References of Subhash Chandra Bose and dinosaurs and the militant groups perpetuating violence are half-hearted and even fall flat at times. Curiosity is built and broken almost instantaneously. And hence even though the edits jump briskly, the length is dragged too much, trying to answer every posed disbelief in the script.

Apart from Shruti Sengupta, there were a few more reasons why I went back to ‘Barfi’, mostly to return disappointed. For all the visual flamboyance of Jagga Jasoos, it ultimately seals a spot in the long list of Bollywood movies which try to speak more than they are qualified to, and then fail desperately at it.

Was I too harsh?