Movie Review: Bobby Jasoos – a must-watch
| |
Balan is at a career zenith and her roles don’t always warrant a high-priced leading man. Like the modern woman, she can do quite well by herself.
Her Bilquis, though grounded in traditional values – some overbearing, most of them strictly necessary – is an independent minded, brilliant mix of the brave and the bold, so much like Balan’s on-screen radiance, it’s impossible to not fall for her.
But that’s not the only reason to give Bobby Jasoos a thumb’s up.
The screenplay by Sanyuktha Chawla Shaikh, directed with good eye for subtleness by debutant Samar Shaikh, has Bobby in Moghalpura, Hyderabad, in a family of six – two sisters, a brusque aunt (Tanvi Azmi), a temperate mother (Supriya Pathak), and a tetchy dad (Rajendra Gupta). And no, her dad isn’t gruff because of petty things like not having a son – the story is above all that. It’s because Bobby is an amateur detective – a fiction-inspired ‘jasoos’, fascinated by the idea of stealth and disguise.
Balan plays dress-up in most of her locality-bound cases. An imam with a hunchbacked posture, a balding, bucktoothed palmist, a ‘quite ordinary’ orderly, a television producer with impossible bosoms, and several low-key burqas help her in nailing down culprits like sons who smoke, adulterous spouses or snooping facts on eligible marriage proposals.
Until one day, she is hired by Anees Khan (Kiran Kumar, excellent), a shady character who wants her to track a girl named Nilofer, with only the age and a birthmark in her hand as a lead.
Bobby’s fancy inventiveness on tracking down case is on show here, and Balan makes her as distinct and infectious a character as possible.
The story, which mingles Bobby’s personal life, a couple of side-characters, a recurring sub-plot of a local hood and his lovelorn problems with the already engaged girl-next-door, provides enough divergence from the main plot to make the two hour running time a light-hearted escapist affair.
The songs – there are three, with music by Shantanu Moitra – and the cinematography by Vishal Sinha stay out of the way; they are inconspicuous, but do their job well.
The other show-stealer, apart from Bobby, is the production design and the sensibility of the Hyderabadi lifestyle.
Samar Shaikh, who graduated from Assistant Directing (Dhoom, Badmaa$h Company) and storyboarding (Chakde! India, Dhoom 3), has a gift of keeping things in check without letting cliché step in – and that is a feat by itself.
The final word
With gripping screenplay, brilliant performances and hilarious situations, the film is a must-watch. Producer Dia Mirza should be proud: it’s not every weekend you get good, family-friendly entertainment, that’s not a sin to the senses.
Read this review in Urdu here.
Released by Reliance Entertainment, 'Bobby Jasoos' is rated U. There's a lack of anything off-putting.
Directed by Samar Shaikh; Produced by Dia Mirza and Sahil Sangha; Written by Sanyuktha Chawla Shaikh; Cinematography by Vishal Sinha; Edited by Hemal Kothari; Music by Shantanu Moitra; Production Design by Tariq Umar Khan.
Starring: Vidya Balan, Ali Fazal, Arjan Bajwa, Anupriya Goenka, Arjan Bajwa, Supriya Pathak, Tanvi Azmi, Prasad Barve, Aakash Dahiya, Zarina Wahab, Rajendra Gupta and Kiran Kumar.