Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na – Too Many film makers spoil the movie
iView Author:Azad
(Bangalore, India)
EMAIL:azad.ksingh [at] gmail [dot] com
Title: Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na – Too Many film makers spoil the movie
Imagine Aamir Khan making his debut with Andaz Apna Apna!!! And what if the director of the same is Mansoor Khan and not Raj Kumar Santoshi! This is the kind of feeling I had after watching Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. This is a movie gone wrong, primarily because it had too many film makers in the crew. The movie is meant to be a spoof of the romantic films made in the Hindi Film Industry, or so it seemed to me. But at the same time it tries too hard to be innocent.
And its not that the film is without its moments. This is one of those rare films where I was waiting anxiously for the scenes involving the khan duo(Arbaaz and Sohail). There’s a scene where the hero saves the “izzat” of a girl, from the clutches of Khan duo by declaring her an AIDS patient. And just before Khan had spelt out “yeh bimari choone se nahi failti”, I had uttered to myself “choone se pyar failta hai”. And then there’s the idea of recurring dream, one of the pet scenes of the romantic movies of the 90s. But instead of showing the veiled face of the heroine in the dreams, the director has shown a veiled face of the hero on a horseback (probably as a homage to one of the most recognizable scenes of the Angry Young Man). And when the hero finally recognizes the face, you get a realization that before recognizing your love, you need to recognize yourself. The conversations between Nasir-ud-din Shah and Ratna Pathak Shah might remind you of Hum Paanch, but for me it’s a fantastic spoof of those countless scenes of Hindi Cinema where the grieving husband/wife engages in conversation with his/her deceased spouse.
But the best moment for me, is the scene just before intermission where the director has no qualms in accepting that the intermission is forced by the story tellers on the audience to increase the sales of popcorn, coffee etc. And the audience is left waiting anxiously for the intermission to get over. And again at the ending, when the director tries to portray that the audience gets so involved with the story that it is dying to meet the characters of the story. Yes Abbas, I too have felt the same way sometimes, but I didn’t get any such feeling after watching Jaane Tu.
Even the initial promos of the film gave out this indication that the movie is trying to spoof the trends of Hindi Cinema. But as the trailers changed so did the movie. From a lighthearted spoof it became a romantic movie.
The basic problem with this movie is that it takes itself too seriously. Andaz Apna Apna, worked for me because it had the ability to laugh on itself. I seriously don’t get it, when you try to spoof it by laughing on others. I seriously fail to understand why Abbas didn’t try to spoof the love story between its lead characters. Why did he have to get serious with the love story part of his script? Was it because of the influence of Aamir and Mansoor Khan? Was it because of the pressure of launching the nephew of Aamir Khan? Does he genuinely believe in those saccharin romances that he has tried to portray? Whatever be the reason, but there seemed a continuous tug of war between two directors. One who wanted to make a spoof and the other who wanted to make a romantic comedy. I don’t mean to say that the love story was dramatic. No, it is not. But at the same time it felt like watching two different movies at the same time. And I seriously don’t understand the need for the character of Prateik Babbar. His paintings indicate that he has had a traumatized childhood, but why? Is it because his best friend and sister(Genelia) had little time for her? Does Abbas want us to believe this?
Almost every review that I have read so far, has heaved huge praises on Genilia. Sorry to say, but I found her pathetic. Was it because of her voice that irritated me or was it because I was unable to relate to her character? Could be a mixture of both. At the end of the film, I could not think of any character, with the possible exception of the Khan duo, that might stay with me.
The movie is exactly like its title – Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. Did Abbas really knew what he was making??
Tags: aamir khan, abbas tyrewala, genelia desouza, imran khan, Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
I agreed with almost everything. The movie is too self-conscious for its subject. It misses the mark by a mile if it was intended to be a spoof. I don’t think that was the case though. Abbas might have wanted to pay tributes (even the lyrics have “paapaa kahate hai.n”, “dil chaahataa hai”, “kahii.n pe nigaahe.n, kahii.n pe nishaanaa”) but there was no sign of spoofing. Humor is stale and cliched. There is not even an attempt to be witty or intelligent. Despite what many reviewers are saying, it is not a ‘Dil Chahta Hai’. Nor a ‘QSQT’ (a Rajput hero alone is not enough). A couple of slight disagreements with you: 1) The Khan brothers did nothing to improve the atmosphere for me. That was a great opportunity to bring in some good, original humor. A lost one. 2) Naseer’s cameo and his performance was easily the best thing about the movie for me. In fact apart from him and Paresh, all other performances ranged from ordinary to poor.
I think lot of people have seen the movie too critically and when you do that you fail to enjoy the fun movie that it is. I thoroughly loved the movie and it is doing well with young urban audiences.
I’m not saying it’s some sort of tour de force, it’s not exceptional cinema by any means but the problem with your analysis is that you’re projecting far too much. You’re looking with too jaundiced, too prejudiced an eye at a movie that merely seeks to update a time honoured tradition in hindi cinema…the coming of age/falling in love for the first time movie. The reason why it has worked at the box office time and again is because for the young enough it’s an idealised, romanticised view of their own life or one they’d like to have and for the rest it’s a nostalic look back at a time in their own lives.
The idiosycratic bits you’re analysing to death are just that – little idiosyncrantic bits to add a coat of uniqueness and a little spiced up peculiarity. I believe in this case you’re missing the forest for the trees.
Well.. i don’t say that Jaane Tu is a very good movie but definetetely a movie worth watching,if we go on trying to find the loopholes then i don’t think we can find good films in Bollywood
Azad, sounds like you went in looking to rip the movie apart after seeing its huge hype, and hoping against hope that it bombs. I pity you for having missed the chance to have an immensely enjoyable 3 hours, and having ended up instead with an agonisingly cynical experience. I find this attitude among fellow indians trying to bring down other people quite pitiful. The girl next to me said, when the movie started, ‘Why’s Genelia overacting so much?’ and I told her ’shut up and let me enjoy the movie.’ I guess i would have done exactly the same if you had been the one sitting next to me.
I do not understand the comparison with Andaz Apna Apna (APP). APP was a different genre and it was a very good film in that genre – some critics might argue that certain scenes are “lifted” but overall APP was a good laugh. Jaane Tu (imho_… is a film that makes no claims …it is a teenage / college love story, however one hopes that with such a great team behind it, the execution will be unique, but alas it fails. There are some good moments (Paresh Rawal, Naseruddin Shah, Arbaaz and Sohail) – but those moments are few and far. The film is an absolute bore and a waste of talent according to me – just proves how clever marketing can help a film succeed
the best spoofs are in love with the thing that they are spoofing. think quentin tarantino. think farah khan. but i agree with azad that JTYJN could not make up its mind as to whether it wants to make an old style hindi rom. com while being aware of the sentimental excesses of the genre or whether it wants to make a new type of film in which case why make fun of the old conventions — just trust yourself to make a funny, witty rom. com. this is why the cliches bother me — how can you mock the cliches of old hindi cinema while resorting to them yourself? either you believe cliches are okay — movies are all about taking cliches and making them real again or you believe films are about breaking with cliches. JTYJN does not seem to know what to believe. that irritated me. that and genelia’s overacting — she was so cute i wanted to shake her!! i know, none of you are fans of KJO here, but really contrast this film to KKHH and you will see what I mean.
KJO is perfectly aware of the cliches of Hindi cinema there and he even gently mocks them by exaggerating them but in the end the film works because he also loves these conventions and their entertainment value. think about it — an 8 year old stage manages the romance between two adults — that is how simple rahul and anjali’s romance is… it is a child’s vision of a perfect world … but the film makes no bones about that.
but in JTYJN one always gets the impression that these are adults, really embarrassed to be doing what they are doing and therefore they need to let us know at every stage through framing and alienating devices like the story within a story, the dream, the khan brothers, the conversations between naseer and ratna that they think Hindi romantic conventions are silly.
and what is with all the super eccentric families in the film — especially genelia’s. now a very interesting film could have been made about the slightly odd, even incestuous attachment that aditi’s brother has to her and how she both runs from him about also makes a “brother” of jai — refusing to sexualize her attachment to him. we could also link this to the cluelessness of these super wealthy, super cool parents who have not been able to establish generational boundaries very effectively in their effort to be supportive. but no, that is not the film we have.
or we could have had an interesting film that looks at how ratna pathak’s desire to raise her son with an alternative model of masculinity comes in the way of him developing a properly adult erotic attachment to a woman and how he has to overcome this form of maternal control by coming to terms with the culture of his father.
even the meghna subplot shows an interesting relation between parents and children — meghna’s refusal to see things as they really are linked to childhood trauma etc
but somehow none of these promising hints of a new way to think the indian family are taken up by the film in any length of detail but rather the film takes the easy way out of mocking a bollywood film by making a bollywood film!!
no sell!
Either way, I’d rather see JTYJN than Love Story 2050, even though I live in Adelaide!
This is what I call over-dissection. Chill yaar, movie was good and had fresh humour. Obviously, Andaz apana apna is far better than this.
there is this movie called no smoking that left me with a very similar question
did the director know what he was making ?
anyways i enjoyed both the films
U dont sound dat happy wid d movie tohugh i simply loved it (and it wasnt ONLY coz of Imraan!)..And ofcourse the music by A R Rehman was notches above Anu Malik’s. I throughly enjoyed the movie and its music.Sign up on Planet Radio City to get all the latest info about ur fav music and singer/composer. Also get lyrics and meet others who like your kinda music. Spread the word about your favourite music.
Azad bhai , y r u so upset , Aamir didnt call u for premier or u dont like his perfection , dude grow up .
the movie is so refreshing and nice humour as well. Go to theatre to enjoy movie and not with any mind set.
Even Big B loved the movie.
again a case where hype and marketing and undeserved wide critical acclaim has made the movie a big hit. The same happened with OSO. While trying to spoof various genres/Bollywood traditions it unintentionally becomes the kind of film it is trying to spoof.
Same with Jaane tu. It was trying to spoof a lot of Bollywood staples but did that in such a cliched fashion that it started spoofing itself. The Khan brothers were the best thing in the movie by a long shot. However the movie is not without merits:
1. The integration of the Khan bro’s with the main storyline/three conditions etc was truly original.
2. Paresh rawal as the inspector…that violent streak scene..:)
3. Ratna Pathak Shah as the mother and all other supporting mom dad characters apart fropm Naseruddin Shah.
U don’t need Naseer for this role…anyone could have done that.
However, the central predictable love story does not work. The girl to whom the story was being told : her performance was irritaing to say the least. And the overt eagerness of the narrators …that does not work…Chalte Chalte did that portion a lot better.
And finally a lot of people are arguing in the vien that critisizing the movie is unfair because its all in the name of good light entertainment.
I am not critisizing because I had gone in to see a Schindler’s List…all those who went to the movie had their expectations clear….however the movie did not work for some….get on with it.
3 hours well spent.. brought back memories… i was to engrossed to get into the technicalities..
nd for me–!–
best dialogue– ” tumhaara ghar hai.. tumhaare bums hain… jahaan marzi baitho!! ”
fav scene — whn aditi enters amits room and duznt speak.. bt lips– “WTF!”
i thought imran khan was very mature for his first film…
the lead female had a weird accent most of the times.. bt she emoted quite well…
Nasseruddin Saab was amazing as usual…!
Khan broz were banking in on Salman, and Sohail looked like he was imitating Sallu … No comments on Arbaaz.. i dint see him.. was 2 busy watchin sohail..
Paresh Rawal was “usually” great…
Jai’s (Imran’s)mother was very aptly cast… did a nice job except for a few scenes i thot..
Supporting cast was cool…
and the frustrated chick listening to the story was nt gr8… bt thats hw chicks are arent they??
music was very catchy.. Rahman saab always duz it!
overall– id give it a 8/10 for pure and honest entertainment… wud be a 9 had the ending been shorter instead of Hum Tum + Chalte Chalte climax!
I hate to say this. I found it to be a very hyped movie.
But I wonder what kind of launch Aamir could have provided Imran – a true chocolate faced guy…only next to Shahid
Extremely predictable too.
Why and everybody and his uncle after Genelia’s accent?
Does everybody have to speak hindi the same way?
In real life Even Aamir sounds very different…In the Dus ka dum episode one can see the maharashtrian tinge in both Aamir’s and Salman’s hindi. So WTF if Genelia sounds different. Maybe its the Southie movies she did before this.
She at least came across as spontaneous .
BTW no one is complaining about rashid ali’s voice on the Aditi song..i thot it was nasal. But the way he went over some words was really cute…That’s it..Cute the whole movie was just that.
JJWS was for the 90s what this is now.
i dont understand why does it have to be a spoof!! its a simple straight forward fun love story !!did the lead pair appeared “spoofy” to you ?? what does it have in common with Andaz apna apna !!..beats me ..
how can trailers “change” the movie ..it was always made as a romantic comedy and sold as one ..
All i can say after reading this piece..
Azad cant dance sala !!..LOL
i agree morph!!
i agree morph!! Azad baweja cant dance!…lols
ATTENTION- THIS COMMENT MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Interesting article, i never considered it as spoof. I’m not so sure whether movie is spoof or not, but it doesn’t work for me. Reason being –
1) All songs were not properly utilized in the movie, despite brilliant soundtrack. If somebody would play any song, I think very few would be able to remember where in the movie it was used, except songs played on TV. Abbas esp killed my fav song of the movie i.e. kabhi Kabhi Aditi, I really felt cheated when I realised that there is no build up for the song and it is dedicated to a cat. If you look at it from other angle you may call it a spoof.
2) Too many references from other movies, such as Sushant meeting Jai (DCH), Jai goes to sushant house and the way he stops himself in between (climax scene of DCH), Aditi dining with sushant (Lakshya). In one of the scene, Jai with Aditi and the other girl (KKHH). It strongly indicates towards a spoof.
3) Bad acting and diction from Genelia. In reply to one of the above comments, here she is shown as mumbaiya girl not a girl from south.
4) I don’t know why people call it fresh. Introducing fresh faces and adding some new gimmicks to same old story is not fresh. Even treatment is not very new, though music was very fresh.
5) Too cliched and lack of common sense.
I’m happy that people liked the movie, coz Imran deserves a good break. It would be interesting to see him in grey shades or negative roles.
Aamir u rocks !!!!!1
Abbas u did a fantastic job “hats off man”
Genelia and Imran are very good!!!!!
I totally disagree with this review
now I will only suggest u to watch this movie once again as an normal Audience n I am sure u will enjoy it
And u writer Dont be alwalys critics OK……
i thought the movie is way too overhyped. i think our critics have gone way too overboard in praising the flick. here is my assessment of the reviews. please add ur own!
rediff raja sen — fawning review — 4 stars!!! http://www.rediff.com/movies/2008/jul/04jaanetu.htm
toi Nikhat Kazmi — balanced review — 21/2 stars
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/moviereview/3198446.cms
sify sonia chopra — balanced review — 21/2 stars http://sify.com/movies/bollywood/review.php?id=14708520&ctid=5&cid=2425
indiatimes renuka vyavahre — Fawning review 3 stars
indiatimes review link is http://movies.indiatimes.com/moviereview/3194073.cms
buzz18 chandrima pal–balanced –3stars
http://www.buzz18.com/reviews/movies/review-jaane-tuya-jaane-na/66501/2
indiafm–taran adarsh –fawning –31/2 stars
http://indiafm.com/movies/review/12917/index.html
OMG, do you guys analyze every single film like this??? Or is it coz you had too many expectations from this film? Anyways, am glad am not half as cynical as some of you are, it would really take the joy out of living:)
The film was nothing exceptional, had its own share of flaws, but it was cute and very feel-good kinds. It was naive and young and therefore refreshing despite all its cliches. Fortunately I went to watch it with no bias whatsoever and enjoyed it immensely. I would thank the whole team behind JTYJN for providing us with an entertaining movie.
@ Justchill…
Ey kya re tu….tum bhi na….jao…main tum se baat nahi karthee….
WTF? Gimme a break …..wudya?
P A S S I O N……F O R……C I N E M A.
Gotit ?
picture zada dhan lagakar dekhli azad ji ne shayad,phir se dekh lo akal bas ghar par rakh dena,this movioe is a perfect entertainer,dont go for thia angrayji review,watch it for the brilliant khans and vivacious genelia.
this movie superb.. who is saying this movies is bored and bad they are seek, they have no sense what the people wants in movie.. in this movie each nd every thng made fine by director.as per mine vies this is second kaho na pyaar hai.!!!!
it was a pain reading ur blog n a disappointment to see ur portray of such gr8 work.
this movie was just passable becoz of its gr8 bgm.
and i dont understand what made this reviewer think this movie was supposed to be a spoof?
this was just a cliched teen romantic comedy.