Jhoom Barabar Jhoom [2007]

Jhoom Barabar Jhoom
[Reviewed : 17th June 2007]


Expectations: I’m a huge Yash Raj Films fan and also love Shaad Ali. Saathiya is one of my all time favourite movies and I found Bunty Aur Babli entertaining and brilliant in the first half [but I absolutely hate the second half of Bunty Aur Babli with as much passion as I love the first half of it haha]… So my expectations were high for Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, but not unreasonably high. I didn’t expect a classic – I didn’t get a classic. I expected an out and out entertainer – but did I get that? Read on to find out…

Music: I love each and every song of the film even more after watching it. There’s so much pace and life in the songs, they’re incredible to listen to and hearing them in the cinema was another experience all together! My favourite songs audio-wise are undoubtedly ‘JBJ’, ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’ & ‘Kiss of Love’. ‘Jhoom’ and the ‘Jhoom Jam’ instrumental are brilliant too. Earlier the only songs on the album that I was not fond of were ‘Ticket To Hollywood’ and ‘Bol Na Halke’ but after watching the movie I even like those songs.

Choreography: Each song was pictured really, really, really well. Vaibhavi Merchant is simply stunning!! There wasn’t really any amazing ‘dancing’ going on but still each song was just so much fun to watch…She’s a great choreographer, and one thing I have noticed about her over the years is that she loves hand-movements a lot haha

Jhoom It irritated the life out of me how this song kept popping up out of nowhere all the freaking time. Choreography was all right, nothing to talk about.

Ticket To Hollywood Brilliantly pictured song, it was so entertaining. Abhishek and Lara were just amazing in it, they’re both so cute and performed so well!!

Kiss Of Love One hell of a mad song! I don’t remember ever seeing such a crazy and mad song, it was so fun to watch. Bobby and Preity looked damn gorgeously adorable, aww!

Bol Na Halke Halke Wow! It looked incredibly gorgeous. However, it was so misplaced in the movie and the film could easily do with this song being cut out. It’s nothing more then a ridiculous toilet break for people who are not interested in seeing Abhishek-Preity’s chemistry [which stood out quite a bit in this song] or Aki Narula’s gorgeous outfits. It was basically like putting a better version of Veer-Zaara in form of a song haha

JBJ & Jhoom Barabar Jhoom Brilliant! I was annoyed at the choreography in the promos because it’s true that there are no real dance moves but hey, the characters hardly held degrees in dancing so you can’t sue them for that haha… It was so much fun to watch and I loved how both the songs came back-to-back! Both were extremely fun to watch! Abhishek and Bobby were so entertaining to watch and Lara and Preity looked beyond beautiful, the girls were just stunning in terms of looks! Dancing-wise Lara is the one who impressed most, as she’s got much more clarity in her dance moves then the others who all appeared a bit messy.

Jhoom Jam I loved how they showed the bloopers of each song with this instrumental, very interesting idea and was fun to watch.

Costumes: were fantastic! Each character was suitably dressed in each stage of the film. Aki Narula has proved once again what a brilliant designer he is, he did a great job with all the actors but my favourite outfits were the ones he designed for the girls, especially the Indian outfits he designed for Preity in ‘Bol Na Halke Halke’ they were so amazingly gorgeous that I just wish he had designed for her in Veer-Zaara because he has a lot of sense in designing keeping the concept of the film in mind and he made Preity look her career-best in that song with those pretty outfits!

Story/Screenplay/Editing: There is no story. There’s absolutely no story. When the second half comes you feel like you’ve been wasted throughout the first half. There’s no story, there’s no message… there’s none of that… However, the screenplay is very tight and the film has been written very well. In terms of what else they could’ve cut out, I think the only useless piece of the film was ‘Bol Na Halke Halke’ which was a pop-up toilet break, a pretty music video, that had nothing to do with the film in any which way, they should’ve just shown it at the end in the credits or something if they wanted it so bad. And I think the ‘story’ that Alvira tells of her fiancé [the Steve track] was not all that amazing and came across really disappointing after Rikki’s great story about his fiancé haha he was so funny… They could’ve written Alvira’s story much better [and I guess this is the best place to say how ridicuclous and stupid that whole Madame Tussauds episode was and how FAKE it looked], but it was still nice.

Direction: Shaad Ali is in full form directing this situational comedy. After Saathiya and Bunty Aur Babli he once again proves his capabilities. Direction is very good!

Performances: In order of preference [Lara Dutta > Abhishek Bachchan / Bobby Deol > Preity Zinta].

Lara Dutta: This woman simply stunned me – she easily stole the show in the entire movie. A natural and absolutely perfect ten-on-ten performance. As the imaginary French Anaida of Rikki’s story she was awesome – she totally blew me away. What an amazing performance!! What a tough role and how easily she handled it… I’m just so in awe of her now. I never expected such a great and natural performance from Lara Dutta – I’ve become a huge fan of hers now, just love her so much. Then as Laila, when I thought she just cannot get any better, she completely changed herself all over and continued to stun me haha… I’m just so amazed by this actress… She’s shocked me to no end in JBJ – I hope her forthcoming films do justice to her talent because with JBJ she has proved that if she gets the right offers she can become the number one actress of our country without any problems. She has it all – acting talent, dancing talent, looks and style. Wow. What impressed me most was her accents… How she so easily handled the French accent in the first half and even more easily handled the Brit accent in the second part…She’s such a natural!! She even incorporated the accents into her Hindi…She worked hard on this role and that is obvious, and she emerges a winner in every single way – JBJ is Lara Dutta’s show all the way!

Abhishek Bachchan: I expected he would fit his role perfectly and he did not disappoint me at all. I got my old Abhi baby back and I’m feel all ever-so positive about him again! After boring and unimpressive performances in Umrao Jaan and Dhoom 2, this man is back – and how! He’s an amazingly natural performer and handles his role with perfection. The only times he fell was moments when I think he got so caught up in his acting that he tended to forget about his freshie accent that he was putting on… Like in the car when he gets Alvida’s phone call and they plan to go to the Mr & Miss Southall contest… He kind of slipped and started talking English in his normal accent rather then freshie one… but he didn’t do that often, it was on rare occasions… Overall, a brilliant performance… I’m really, really happy because finally he’s impressed me after the longest time.

Bobby Deol: In the first half as the Steve of Alvira’s story, Bobby acted extremely well and fit in very naturally. And I loved how he tried to add on that Brit accent [especially when he called her ‘Al’ he said that in such a Brit way]! However, the role he had in the first half was very easy and not challenging for an actor of his calibre – it didn’t wow me because that level of performance is easily expected from him. When the second half came and we saw Satvinder, I was impressed and happy to say the least! He churned out a stunning performance and completely stole my heart!! He stole so many scenes in the second half, whenever he appeared on screen he made it was him you look at and no one else. Brilliant facial expressions, even more brilliant dialogue delivery and all this resulted in a performance I, as a huge fan of Bobby Deol, am so hyped about – I had become unsure about Bobby having chosen this role because of some of the reviews but after seeing it for myself I am so happy he agreed to it because it was awesome, especially the second half, he was just so amazing haha…And aww he was soo adorable as Sattu hehe!!

Preity Zinta: To begin with, she looked gorgeous – so natural, so fresh and beautiful! Her role was the least demanding of the four and that was slightly disappointing, but performance-wise she left nothing to be desired as she filled the requirements of the role to absolute perfection! Her facial expressions were adorable and she’s never looked as amazing as she did in ‘Bol Na Halke Halke’. The only disappointment I had from her that she didn’t have a British accent, whereas the other actors all tried to change their accents and succeeded… I wish she had worked harder on that because it would have helped a lot more in understanding her as a Brit character… I mean when you heard her have convo’s with her cousin Humera or even that guy friend of hers, they had total Brit accents, but she sounded like she was from India [because she is]. Anyway I don’t want to dwell on the downside too much, she was still suited to the character more then I can imagine anyone else, and barring the accent problem, she handled the role with absolute ease and perfection!

Amitabh Bachchan: His laugh at the end really annoyed me, urgh!!

Overall: There’s no specific story as such so JBJ is really just a fun film full of funny moments, and there are many of those great moments making JBJ a film worth watching. I have a feeling it will have a lot of repeat value and the DVD will definitely be a worthwhile buy also. It’s not the best film I’ve ever seen and to be honest it’s not even the most entertaining film, because sadly there were some boring moments, however overall it’s a good film and I really enjoyed myself watching it and I can see myself watching it again and again on DVD – can’t wait to buy the DVD!!