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Join UsRating: 1/5 Stars (One star)
Star Cast: Arbaaz Khan, Himansh Kohli, Ashutosh Rana, Manjiri Fadnis, Prem Chopra, Supriya Pathak
Director: Keshhav Panneriy
What’s Good: The ‘it’s so bad that it’s good’ nature of the script.
What’s Bad: Acting, CGI, Music, Dialogues, Run-time. Did I miss anything? May be the entire end result including a poor title!
Loo Break: You shouldn’t go for the film in the first place. If you do, then buy extra colas just to keep on your toes for loo visits!
Watch or Not?: Not unless you’re at gunpoint!
User Rating:
Alia Patrick (Manjiri Fadnis) is brought up in a Catholic family based in Udaipur. Her father Peter Patrick loves his sons much more than her because she’s a girl child.
From being shifted to a government school to save money to being bullied at school, Alia finally finds happiness in college, when she falls in love with Alex (Himansh Kohli). Until, her parents marry her off to an arrogant royal, Vikram Pratap Singh (Ashutosh Rana) for money.
Given that Vikram is a typical male chauvinist, Alia is unhappy with her marriage. When she is forced to get an abortion, Alia seeking help from her royal aide, Lakshmi (Supriya Pathak) flees to Mumbai. She makes a career as a writer and also helps underprivileged kids in education.
She soon meets Aditya Kapoor (Arbaaz Khan) who falls in love with her and accepts her child from first marriage. The film revolves around Alia’s journey from Rajasthan to Mumbai and finally USA.
Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai Review: Script Analysis
The script of Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai is basically one big lecture on women empowerment in the most shoddy manner. There are no timelines, no efforts taken to make sense in any manner. Most conversations are forced and nothing about them, the language, the manner in which they are delivered is natural.
Alia’s journey is so foolishly portrayed and not to mention how lightly they throw away things like two time ‘Pulitzer Prize’ winner.
Most of the time, the script is unintentionally funny. In a scene, where Arbaaz’s character is talking to Alia’s daughter, he jokingly says ‘Naughty girl’ and it sounds pathetically paedophile types.
Regressive dialogues such “khoobsurat ladkiyon ko dimaag nai hota” and “Mard toh Mard hota hai. Aurat ho, adjust kar lo” are used too often. In the entire section of Alia being in US, the makers even highlight racism and we see her jabbering sh*t like, “We have a good ass and we are proud of it.” It left me confused, should I laugh it off or simply pity the writer.
There’s also Urdu poetry thrown in through Prem Chopra’s character and that is the most unnecessary part of the story. Their exchanges have no head or tail and suddenly I felt like was this the writer’s interpretation of existential theory, having dialogue with no purpose.
Characters such as Alia’s brothers are never shown and they are not developed further in the story. Her father too disappears in the second half.
Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai Review: Star Performance
Manjiri Fadnis as Alia Patrick, tries hard to emote everything at once. Her dialogue delivery is weak and she’s messed up in the scenes where she is supposed to show her inner conflict or fears.
Ashutosh Rana is a wasted in this below average film. His character demands him to be loud and hence the actor leaves no stones unturned to achieve that. His scene fighting a tiger is hilarious.
Arbaaz Khan as Aditya Kapoor is uncomfortable in all frames. Hell, he even looks embarrassed to play that character in some scenes. He says his lines like he’s asked to read.
Himansh Kohli has a small role in the film. He manages to leave no impact other than making us question, why is he even acting?
Prem Chopra gets an extremely boring role of Mirza who mouths only Urdu shayaris.
Supriya Pathak is there in this film – why? The actress is so talented that you feel sad to watch her here.
Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai Review: Direction, Music
Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai is a 170 minute long film. Yes, that’s my opening line for this section since the director just didn’t plan to hire an editor for the film. Not that keeping the run time low is the only job an editor has. But clearly there’s no chopping of any kind that happened here.
Apart from that, Keshav Panneriy gives us shoddy camera work too. There are low resolution, blurry shots which hamper the viewing experience often. CGI is extremely badly done, especially one particular song which comes in the second half.
Glitches such as snow in Udaipur or Alia strutting in high heels on a snow clad seat are clear signs of mismanaged work.
Also, a scene where Alia and Aditya go for a lunch date, we see a gay waiter, speaking in an orgasmic manner with Aditya and also his overall feminine habits is poor portrayal of homosexuals and there’s nothing funny about it.
The music of the film is extremely boring and you almost feel like leaving the theater.
Costumes are shady for all the characters but specifically dirty for Ashutosh Rana’s royalty avatar.
Production design team too puts no head into their work and hence old instruments such as a radio is merely kept as a showpiece in one of the scenes, it has no connecting wire.
Overall, it fails in all major departments.
Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai Review: The Last Word
In the second half, Arbaaz Khan quips in a scene, ‘You may leave’ and I honestly thought that was my cue to leave the theater too. Sitting through this 3 hour long ordeal of a film is punishable. Go plant some trees or do nothing instead. 1 star for making and releasing the film.
Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai Trailer
Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai releases on 3rd March, 2017.
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