A never-ending lullaby

Johnson Thomas

This mystery-comedy-adventure-musical may have its heart in the right place, being fluffy and lovable and all that, but its never-ending length is something that even those noble intentions cannot overcome. Ranbir is in fine fettle, his myriad expressiveness as Jagga, a self-proclaimed detective, who is trying to locate the whereabouts of his foster father Badal Bagchi, also fondly referred to as Tooty-Footy. 

Katrina plays Shruti, a school teacher who tells stories about Jagga to her students. And it’s sing song all the way through. The movie’s publicity material highlights the fact that there are 29 songs in all but I lost count after 11. There’s only so much you can take after all.

The songs, imminently forgettable ones, in fact, don’t lend any special heft to this unnecessarily elongated and tediously stretched narration of a one line story. Pritam’s music is nowhere close to achieving the Barfi magic anyway and Basu’s direction is wayward and unfocused. 

The major twist here is a comic baddie (Saurabh Shukla), who orders a hit against Tooty Footy and there’s stupidity in the reasoning behind why his obituary has been inserted in a newspaper.  

The narrative pattern is entirely predictable and boring. Basu tries hard to adopt the look of a fantasy – shooting in magical natural surroundings of Darjeeling, Manipur, South Africa, Morocco, Kenya, Thailand  and Ravi Verman’s cinematography does capture the unadulterated beauty of those regions with a photo-realism worthy of appreciation.  

But Jagga Jasoos stutters under the weight of an unwieldy length and lack of imagination. Basu’ s frolicking style doesn’t alleviate the miseries heaped on by a meandering script and an overly indulgent expanse. This one’s bound to hit a major roadblock where audience appreciation is concerned!