Movie Review: Jab We Met

Writer-director Imtiaz Ali's debut feature, the Abhay Deol-Ayesha Takia starrer Socha Na Tha, was one of those movies that you either loved or couldn't understand what the fuss was all about. If you, like me, were one of the former, then you'll be happy to know that his sophomore effort, Jab We Met starring Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor, is a sharper, wittier, better made version of the two movies he's written previously, Socha Na Tha and Ahista Ahista.

***Mild spoilers follow***

Meet Aditya, a young man who appears to be undergoing some sort of trauma as he silently walks out of an angry boardroom to pay a visit to some chick’s wedding reception before winding up where every good citizen of Mumbai eventually finds himself: Victoria Terminus.

He boards a train for the lack of anything better to do and lapses into a blue funk. Unfortunately for him, he’s chosen a seat next to the ultimate Co-Passenger from Hell: an extremely talkative Punjabi maiden full of grating good cheer who goes by the name of Geet.

Try as he might, he can’t get her to A) shut up and B) leave him alone. Finally, her overwhelming desire to be helpful lands the two of them in a right awful mess that sends them on a road trip to Bhatinda. Geet turns out to be a rather nice girl and we learn that she’s on her way to see her tradition-bound family in Punjab before she runs away to marry her lover. Aditya finally breaks down and confesses that he’s something of a tycoon whose father died last year and mother ran away with some guy a while back. He has Issues.

This is where the neon lights flashing DRAMA! DRAMA! DRAMA! would go off in any other movie but fortunately for us, Geet is a loudmouth and Aditya has a sense of humor so we live to cry another day.

Next up is Geet and her loud family, including a properly forbidding patriarch (a hilarious, scene stealing Dara Singh) and a bunch of other people who prove their relationship to Geet by their disarmingly loud and hearty behavior. Then Geet runs off to Manali and Aditya (in one those flashes of movie brilliance) decides to accompany her on her flight so that he won’t have face the fallout.

Nine months later, her family sees him on TV and fetches up at his doorstep to beat the whereabouts of their daughter out of him. Aditya sets out once more to find Geet and is shocked when he finally tracks her down. Gone is the eternal optimist who once talked nineteen to the dozen - instead, dumped by her boyfriend and too proud to return home, this Geet is a shadow of her former self.

She teaches school! She lives in a working women’s hostel! Run by nuns! She washes dishes! She doesn’t paint her nails! She wears no makeup! She looks like a washed out rabbit… er, um, I meant to say, hand her a baby in a shawl already because this is obviously a girl that’s hard done by.

Anyway, Aditya convinces her to come back to Bhatinda with him and tries to play Geet to her traumatized Aditya with mixed results. The movie then hurtles to a slightly non-traditional end in an “I saw that coming” sort of way that’s very entertaining.

***

Groundbreaking, experimental cinema this is not. If that’s what you’re after, then you might want to give Anurag Kashyap’s No Smoking, the other release this week, a try. But if you’re in the mood for a well executed romantic comedy, then this is the movie for you. It’s enjoyable Bollywood fare that doesn’t allow its multiplex roots to lure it away from the fact that this is a Hindi language movie. After what seems like eons, I saw a movie that wasn't so hung up on the foreign box office that it forgot the millions that might watch it in India. Annoying posers like Heyy Babyy, with their lamentable trick of using self-consciously delivered English lines to convey major plot points could learn a thing or two from this script.

Imtiaz Ali’s characters are thoroughly average Indians who speak multiple languages, move between urban and rural environments, offer unnecessary advice, feel touchy about their womenfolk, aren’t above a bit of eve-teasing when they feel they can get away with it, and listen to each other. When Aditya finally meets Geet’s lover, Anshuman, you can see that class has reared its head - but while Geet and Aditya are traveling together, they find a way to relate to each other as Indians always do: she asks him if he’s a Bachchan fan, gives him unnecessary tips on how save pennies and offers to introduce him to her sister.

Couched in your average rom-com terms is the tale of an optimist who has never had her optimism challenged and a man who’s not quite a pessimist but is in a situation where he can’t find any reason to be optimistic. Both Geet and Aditya find themselves in situations that they never imagined they would experience and they need each other to pull out of it.

As the situations reverse in the second half, we’re reminded that resilience is not always reflected by tight-lipped stoicism and life is not merely a biological function. Sometimes, one discovers one’s inner strength with an explosive round of abuse and shared laughter. What strikes you most about Geet and Aditya's relationship is their affectionate friendship, their comfort with each other, their recognition and subsequent acceptance of each other’s sadness and failings as an integral part of them. When Geet cons Aditya into taking the fall for one of her problems, his only reaction is a rueful shake of the head - he knows Geet is a bit of a hustler.

There were a couple of moments in the film that took me out of it. One was when Aditya returns to face the wrath of his shareholders after going walkabout on their ass and Shahid Kapoor (who otherwise did a fine job here) lapses into his Acting! persona complete with dimples and squint. Watching him trying to convince a roomful of people that although their company, under his leadership, was all but bankrupt, it was nothing that a smile and bit of enthusiasm wouldn’t fix was a little painful. Thankfully, Ali seemed to get that and glossed over it with as much finesse as he was able to muster.

The second thing that gave me pause were the songs: I think this is one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard all year and it mirrors the film in walking the fine edge of traditional Indian music vs. hip western. But if ever there was a movie that demanded that nobody lip-sync, this was it. But at least the script recognized that need and actively addressed it. Good save there.

In the maybe category falls the director’s decision to cut all “iffy” bits of dialogue. There is no filler in this script, it’s all pared down to a lean, satisfying whole. Nobody gets a line that doesn't deserve it and while I approved of most of it, like the fact that the ex-girlfriend didn’t get to make the speech that all ex-girlfriends get to make in movies of this sort, I think I’d have liked to hear the mother’s voice. Just her saying “Thanks” or something. Nothing especially profound but just a little throwaway line so I got to hear the character’s reaction to her estranged son.

Casting is perfect - Kareena Kapoor’s natural ebullience, which can turn her into a shrill ham on most occasions, is admirably leashed as she tries to steal every scene she's in; Shahid Kapoor is still five inches tall and has a trout pout but has developed the acting chops to convincingly inhabit the role of a sober young man; and I’d like Dara Singh to be my grandpa.

I’d like to give a special shoutout to editor Aarti Bajaj - for the past while I’ve been watching Bollywood movies that are so crappily put together, there’s inevitably some scene left dangling somewhere that makes me wonder if it was some kind of afterthought that someone forgot. Happily there’s no such thing in Jab We Met. I’m so happy when I get crumbs like that. Sad, I know.

I think it’s a perfect date movie - and it’s even better if you don’t have a date.