Jug Jug Jeeyo Review: Peppered with Punjabi humour
The problem with Raj Mehta is his mood swings. He is indecisive to a fault and gets jammed between making a Punjabi comedy and a serious look at marriages and the hypocrisy that matrimony is built around. One is full of funny bones and the other is over the top.
Two couples are involved in marriage and impending break-up. One is: Kukko (Varun Dhavan) and Nalina (Kiara Advani). The other: parents of Kuko, Bheem Saini (Anil Kapoor) and his wife of three decades and counting Geeta (Neetu Singh). The younger couple has marital differences based purely on the incompatibility of success and failure. Nalina is seeing an unprecedented upward trend in her career, while Kukko is doing nothing much.
They have moved from Patiala to Toronto and are on the verge of another kick up in USA. A wedding in the family involving the younger child, Ginny (Prajkta Kohli — who seems hopelessly cast as she looks more like a child artiste!) brings the overseas couple coming home and keeping their splitsville under the wraps. Even as they are play-acting togetherness, they are shocked to see Pappa Bheem cheating on their mom and having an affair with schoolteacher Meera (Tisca Chopra). That marriage is also on the rocks.
Everyone is waiting for the impending wedding to get over and then have the divorces in place. This spread of seeming relationships in the midst of Punjabi humour is what you have to endure for 150 minutes.
Notwithstanding an interesting cast and the actors trying, things do not work out. This Punjabi Hum Aap Ke Hain Kaun is too contrived. The Anil Kapoor-Varun Dhavan energy is “Punjabi” but beyond a point, it is over the top. The script swiftly moves from group dances at Punjabi marriages and one-liners (some really hilarious) to serious introspection on the institution of marriage. The pendulum swings are a tad too often for comfort.
However, the performances save the day. Notwithstanding that they too go over the top every once in a while, they deliver with sincerity. Surely, Anil and Varun — Anil is steady and Varun is contemporary. Neetu looks gracious, but in a few emotive moments, she could have delivered better. One cannot but compare her with Dimple in the context. Kiara Advani is the glamour quotient. Manish Paul adds the right lines and has a good sense of comic timing. Jug Jug Jiyo is passable but could have been a much better film had it been properly placed and edited.
