Vishesh Films’ Jalebi (UA) is a love story with a difference. Aisha (Rhea Chakraborty) and Dev (Varun Mitra) fall in love and soon get married even though they are quite different from one another. Dev is a tourist guide and loves the city he lives in. His home, having the old-world charm, is so dear to him that he often gets tourists home to see the place. On the other hand, Aisha is an outgoing and gregarious person who wants to stand on her feet. After marriage, she feels suffocated in her marital home because she can’t be the ideal daughter-in-law as desired by Dev and his family.
Things reach a stage where Aisha returns to her parental home. Years later, Aisha meets Dev in a train journey. She also meets his new wife, Anu (Digangana Suryavanshi), and their little daughter, Disha (Aanya Dureja). As she engages in a conversation with Anu and Dev, Aisha gets answers to several questions which had been troubling her over the years.
The film is a remake of Bengali film Praktan and it has been scripted by Kausar Munir and Pushpdeep Bhardwaj. The story’s underlying philosophy is that if you cannot take love to its rightful place, it is best to leave it at an interesting point. However, in the present story, it doesn’t appear as if Dev couldn’t have taken his love to its logical conclusion. His act of, therefore, leaving it and giving up so easily does not appeal to the audience. Dev reveals in the end why he had not tried to reconcile with Aisha but his reason is so lame that it doesn’t make him a hero in the viewers’ eyes. Even Aisha’s passive approach to the problem doesn’t appeal to the audience. The screenplay, penned by the duo, with additional screenplay by Suhrita, seems contrived and lacking conviction. It often appears that the drama moves in the direction in which the writers want it to rather than progressing seamlessly and naturally. As a result, the audience does not get convinced with the reasons offered, especially in the climax. The dialogues, written by the duo, are good at places and ordinary at others.
Rhea Chakraborty does fairly well as Aisha. Varun Mitra makes an ordinary debut in the role of Dev. He tends to overact at places. He looks fairly alright. Digangana Suryavanshi is reasonably good as Anu. Pravina Deshpande makes her presence amply felt as Dev’s mother. Poorti Arya lends average support as Dev’s sister, Renu. Mahesh Thakur is sincere as Aisha’s father. Arjun Kanungo (as Arjun) has his moments. Farida Dadi (as Saifa aunty), Yusuf Hussain (as Siddiqui uncle), Sonali Sudan (as Simar), Shabnam Kapoor (as Simar’s mom), Priya Yadav (as Anhaita), Rajsi Verma (as Sumi bhabhi), Sanchay Goswami (as Chaubey), Jimmy Sharma (as Rocky), Jashan Singh Kohli (as Sunny) and the others lend fair support.
Pushpdeep Bhardwaj’s direction is okay; it needed to be far more sensitive. Music (Tanishk Bagchi, Javed-Mohsin, Jeet Ganguli, Abhishek Mishra, Samuel and Akanksha) is fantastic, with several of the songs being very appealing and melodious. In particular, ‘Pal ek pal’ is a hit number. ‘Tera mera rishta’, ‘Tum se’ and ‘Mera pyaar tera pyaar’ are also very appealing numbers. Lyrics (Rashmi Virag, Manoj Kumarnath, Arafat Mehmood, Prashant Ingole and Kunaal Verma) are of a good standard. Song picturisations (by Raju Khan and Sana Khan) are nice but could’ve been more eye-filling. Raju Singh’s background music is decent. Manoj Soni’s camerawork is nice. Abbas Ali Moghul’s action scenes are okay. Production designing (by Sandeep Suvarna) is fair. Devendra Murdeshwar’s editing is good enough to not confuse the viewers despite the drama oscillating between present times and flashbacks.
On the whole, Jalebi is a half-baked attempt and will, therefore, not prove to be a sweet experience for its investors.
Released on 12-10-’18 at Regal (daily 1 show) and other cinemas of Bombay thru Viacom18 Motion Pictures. Publicity: ordinary. Opening: dull. …….Also released all over. Opening was weak everywhere.