Yash Raj Films’ Jayeshbhai Jordaar (UA) is about female infanticide. Jayeshbhai (Ranveer Singh) lives in a village with his orthodox parents (Boman Irani and Ratna Pathak Shah), wife, Mudra (Shalini Pandey), and young daughter, Siddhi (Jia Vaidya). Mudra is pregnant for the eighth time. The first pregnancy had resulted in the birth of Siddhi but after that, she had had to undergo abortions six times because the illegal sonography each time revealed that it was a female foetus. Jayeshbhai’s parents want the daughter-in-law to give them a grandson. However, Jayeshbhai is modern in his thinking and he doesn’t distinguish between the girl child and the boy child. He has the courage to stand by his wife and ensure that she delivers this time in spite of being aware that it would be a daughter. But Jayesh does not have the guts to tell his parents so. He, therefore, pretends to be on their side while all the time protecting Mudra from his wily parents who want her to leave him so that he can marry some other girl who would give the family a male heir. Does Jayeshbhai succeed in ensuring that Mudra delivers their second daughter? Or do the evil parents have their way?
Divyang Thakkar has written a story that seems 50 years too late. In the guise of being progressive, what Thakkar offers is actually regressive because it digs out what was in vogue many decades ago. Yes, the practice of female infanticide may still be existent in parts of India but the majority of the city and town audiences will not be able to identify with the story. Divyang Thakkar’s screenplay (with additional screenplay by Anckur Chaudhry) is ridiculous — and that’s putting it mildly. Why Jayesh simply can’t confront his parents instead of having to lie and cry each time is not explained. If he has the courage to stand by his wife, he surely should be bold enough to set his parents right, right? But there’s no explanation offered on why he is not bold enough to tell his parents that he wants the girl child. The track of Jayesh threatening to cut off his sex organ if he does not have his way is neither funny nor impactful. Ditto for the entire screenplay — the light scenes (and there are plenty of them) don’t make the viewers laugh or even smile while the emotional scenes absolutely fail to touch the heart most of the times. The kiss angle seems to be an afterthought and it sticks out like a sore thumb rather than moving the audience emotionally. The track of a brother and a sister getting married to another set of sister and brother will also appear weird for today’s audiences. Frankly, even the womenfolk will not be impressed by the story and screenplay although that should’ve been the case. That’s because the identification with the characters and the drama will be very less. It would not be incorrect to say that the drama about one time period seems to have been written for the audience of a completely different time period. Divyang Thakkar’s dialogues are good but only at places. Otherwise, the dialogues for most of the part are ordinary.
Ranveer Singh is sincere and earnest. He gets into the skin of Jayesh’s character and comes out trumps. Looking at his performance, one actually feels bad for him because it is a waste of immense talent on a mindless enterprise. Shalini Pandey gets limited scope. As Mudra, she does a fair job but does not have the looks of a heroine. Jia Vaidya impresses upto a point after which her heavy-duty dialogues do get a bit irritating. Boman Irani does justice to his role but not many will be able to identify with his character. Ratna Pathak Shah is natural to the core. Puneet Issar is likeable. Deeksha Joshi delivers an energetic performance as Jayesh’s sister. Swati Das is very natural as the doctor. Binda Rawal and Nishi Doshi are also good as the other doctors. Samay Thakkar makes his mark as Mudra’s father. Sukant Goel (as Kaushal), and the others provide fair support.
Divyang Thakkar’s direction is found lacking because he does not seem to understand the mindset of today’s audience. His narration gets boring and irritating after a while. Vishal-Shekhar’s music is ordinary. Lyrics (Jaideep Sahni, Kumaar and Vayu) are okay. Ruel Dausan Varindani’s choreography is quite nice, especially in the ‘Firecracker’ song. Sanchit Balhara and Ankit Balhara’s background music is average and needed to be more impactful. Siddharth Diwan’s cinematography is good. Action and stunt scenes (choreographed by Oh Sea Young, Sunil Rodrigues and Riyaz-Habib) are alright. Mayur Sharma’s production designing is nice. Namrata Rao’s editing is sharp.
On the whole, Jayeshbhai Jordaar is a disastrous fare and will face rejection from the audience, generally speaking. It has come about four to five decades too late!
Released on 13-5-’22 at Inox (daily 9 shows) and other cinemas of Bombay by Yash Raj Film Distributors. Publicity: so-so (qualitatively speaking). Opening: frighteningly poor. …….Also released all over. Opening was terribly weak everywhere.