Jalebi Review: Rhea Chakraborty and Varun Mitra's Jalebi is insipid!

Film: Jalebi (Romance-Drama)

Critic’s Rating: 2.5/5

Cast: Rhea Chakraborty, Varun Mitra, Digangana Suryavanshi

Direction: Pushpdeep Bhardwaj

Written by: Kausar Munir and Pushpdeep Bhardwaj

Duration: 2 hours, 10 minutes

Language: Hindi (U/A)

Story:

A remake of the Bengali film Praktan (2016), which means ‘former’, this is the story of a married couple who is now estranged. When they bump into each other on a train journey, flashbacks abound of how Aysha (Rhea Chakraborty) met Dev (Varun Mitra). He is currently married to Anu (Digangana) and even has a young daughter. Seeing him settled makes Aysha question whether he really loved her. Or was she just imagining that she was once in a happy place?

Review:

Aysha is a spoilt brat who doesn’t know what she wants in life. She is talented, ambitious, an author, an advertising whiz and God alone knows what else. Yet, she falls for a simple guy like Dev, who is happy playing a guide and living in a haveli along with his mother and sister.

That she is impulsive — takes action first and then thinks it over — is understandable. As is the fact that she won’t settle for anything mundane, middle-class or routine. She is emancipated (puffs at a cigarette to prove her point) and is an attention-seeker, who will go to any lengths to grab it. Dev is diametrically opposite and fully committed to her, except when she asks him to leave his mother and haveli behind. And then, she sits with her father and friends and rues the day she left him.

God, this is one complex character with a dog-in-the-manger attitude. She will neither live nor will she let live. When she meets her man on the train journey, she is distraught having lost him to another woman. And yet, you do not feel too sorry for her because you fail to understand why she messed up her marriage in the first place! The treatment is like a Sridevi-Jeetendra-Jaya Prada South remake from the ’80s. And you don’t empathise with the leads because neither their passion nor pain translates.

Of the performances, Rhea passes muster. She’s hot to look at (though she has spindly legs) which she insists on showing off to give the impression that she’s young and natty. Newcomer Varun seems comfortable in his first big-screen outing. He’ll definitely find another film.

Music from the Bhatts is usually mellifluous. However, on the downside, all their songs sound alike. So while tracks like Pal (Javed-Mohsin), Tum Se (Samuel-Akanksha) and Mera Pyar Tera Pyar (Jeet Gannguli) have that lilting quality, there is also that sense of déjà vu. You could just interchange the actors lip-syncing to them and no one will bother.

Another Bhatt trademark is that the dialogue must give as much emphasis to the word jism (body) as it does to dil (heart). Guys, this is an age-old trick that you have already overused. It went out with Mallika Sherawat!

Verdict:

If you have a sweet tooth, dig into a box of jalebis. This movie cannot satiate your appetite.