Jagga Jasoos Review: Fun, comical, & intriguing, this detective drama is sure to entertain!

One Line Review: Fun movie, shot exotically with musical experience and many cute moments!

Positive Points: Strong plot, fascinating storytelling and brilliant cinematography packed with cute characters and many fun moments!

Negative Points: The song Ullu Ka Pattha is misplaced and creates a loophole, climax chase scene is too choppy and face-paced which creates confusion and momentary poor use of CGI which was unnecessary for Ostrich race!

Plot: Jagga (Ranbir Kapoor) spends most of his life in military school, helping in the staff but has a particular skill of investigation and sense of observance, which also helps him in his amateur detective work. But Jagga is cursed by one disability of stuttering, hence he has to talk via songs or at least in a lyrical manner! While sitting in a local café he comes across Shruti (Katrina Kaif), a clumsy reporter, who was in the town on a secret mission to investigate Naxalite activities. Something strange brought Jagga to the attention about Shruti, intrigues Jagga to keep an eye on her. Eventually, he found out the truth and joins already troubled Shruti to help her in the mission. In return, she promised him that if he ever needs her help, she would oblige.

Jagga being raised almost as an orphan as his Father Tutti futti (Saswata Chatterjee) abandon him and left him without saying anything, but kept in touch with a VHS tape he used to send to him every year, as his birth day gift. One instance, Jagga didn’t receive his tape! Disheartened Jagga found out, his father is dead! And to find out what was the reason why his father abandoned him, he came to Kolkata, only to find out his father is alive and his death was a fabricated lie to cover a conspiracy. Being a detective that he is, Jagga embarks on an adventurous journey with Shruti to find his father, alive!

Performances: Since Jagga being a protagonist, Ranbir Kapoor has a lot to pull on his shoulders and considering his performance from his first scene to last, he pretty much nailed it. There we many moments where he outshines and some scenes he just takes the audience to the sad part of the emotional spectrum, despite the story of an abandoned kid is bit grim. Although it is still hard to perceive Ranbir as a teenager in the school setting, his boyish antics does make it less cringe! One thing commendable, he did carry his bearing of a teenage detective and managed to look intrigued in the scene it was required! And he did set himself and film’s premise as a detective story with the case of Clock-Tower case, in first 15 minutes! Plus his makeshift auto powered skate shoes is something you would like to possess!

The storyline is narrated by Katrina Kaif, told as she was part of Jagga’s journey. But her performance was average, but not disappointing at all. She covered most of the moments just being cute and clumsy on screen. And her chemistry with Ranbir Kapoor is simply flawless and one step upgraded from Ajab Prem Ki Gajab Kahani!

The one actor who really outshines of all was, Saswata Chatterjee! Previously he did a role of a terrifying antagonist, Bob Biswas in Kahaani. And this time in Jagga Jasoos he was playing a two-shaded character, one as a caring father who taught Jagga how to live his life and other as an undercover journalist, while being clumsy and misfortunate at the same time. And he nailed it! Saurabh Shukla as the villain was flawless as that character also has a shade of being rascal and funny at the same time.

Direction: It is a fact about director Anurag Basu that storytelling is his strong forte and Jagga Jasoos can be counted as his prominent attempt! Despite strong story telling, his direction proves his metal right once again as location selection, scene pacing, making most of his star cast, in spite of partially hauled production schedule, is admirable!

Technical Aspects: Jagga Jasoos can also be helmed as a bright example in Bollywood of how a compelling storyline can go great with gripping cinematography! So, is it capturing the scenic beauty of the landscape in North-East India or rustic locations in South Africa or even gorilla cinematography to rise pace of the scene! It really merges well and involves audience into the film.

Bollywood is known for his masala films and its songs are considered as a seasoning for the film, and ‘musical’ is just remained as a tag to categorize a film in the catalogs. But since the story is the main aspect of this film, it righteously justifies its title of ‘Musical.’ This must be the first Bollywood film which carries storyline and narration by its character in musical and lyrical manner, and one part of appreciation must be given to lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya and Neelesh Mishra to write such dialogues-cum-lyrics involving plot twist!

As slapstick fight scene is Anurag Basu’s style, action director Allan Amin kept that niche very well and designed the choreography accordingly. Plus, most of the scenes were shot well by Ravi Varman!

Music: Since most of the music is required in the background and musical monologues, the focus wasn’t so much on songs for the album. Though there songs like Ullu Ka Pattha, Phir Wahi among others are good to listen and Khana Khake and Galti Se Mistake song are really fun! Pritam also deserves a fair compliment on background score as it helps the narration to merge well!

Final verdict: Jagga Jasoos is genuinely good as a musical adventurous rom-com with a compelling yet fast paced narration, despite it’s almost 3hrs long run time, which doesn’t bother at all!