Cast: Vidya Balan, Ali Fazal, Rajendra Gupta, Supriya
Pathak, Tanvi Azmi, Benaf Dadachanji, Zarina Wahab, Arjan Bajwa, Kiran Kumar,
Prasad Barve, Akash Dahiya, Tejas Mahajan
The backdrop of the movie is the over populated Mughalpura region of old Hyderabad. Bilkis (Vidya Balan), the eldest daughter of the conservative Ahmed family is a self taught and self proclaimed detective aka ‘jasoos’. She has no formal training in this area. But she avidly watches the hindi detective serials and calls herself ‘Bobby Jasoos’. She gets mundane detective jobs and roams fearless in all nooks and corners of Mughalpura at all times. In fact, she is the only one who takes her profession and her professional skills seriously till she is contacted by an elderly Anees Khan (Kiran Kumar). He maintains a rich but secretive personality and asks her to find three people, one after the other. For each endeavor, he pays her handsomely (a bit too much by her standards). But, as for the clues, he can only provide the name, age and birth mark of missing persons and not any photo. Bobby along with her working allies – Shetty (Prasad Barve), Munna (Akash Dahiya), Suhail (Tejas Mahajan), works on the assignments in her trademark ‘naïve but full-of-drama’ style. She gets success. But somewhere she gets suspicious of the whole operation and decides to unravel the root of the matter. Also, somewhere alongside she discovers mutual liking and love with Tasawur (Ali Fazal), a popular tv presenter who also lives in Mughalpura and assists her in her endeavors.
As expected, Vidya is flawless in her scenes. In her bid as the detective, she dons a wide range of makeovers – hobbling fakir, funny toothed palmist, fatso tv producer etc. She does a terrific job with each one of them. But most of these avatars simply zoom off the screen, without taking the required time and leaving the desired impact. Ali Fazal looks younger to her. But he acts well and matches her performance in the scenes where they are together. Arjan Bajwa (Lala) plays a goon and inspite of soorma and stubble, he looks like a hunk in all his scenes. His acting is nonchalant. As such, not many lines are given to him to deliver. Kiran Kumar has a substantial role and he could have made it impactful. Surprisingly, he did not. Instead, Supriya Pathak (Zebo, Bilkis’ mother) and Tanvi Azmi (Kausar, Bilkis’ khaala) have simple roles, but they leave impact! Rajendra Gupta (Bilkis’ father) and Benaf Dadachanji (Noor, Bilkis’ sister) are good as well. Rest are OK. Cinematography is good. Music is average. However, the number ‘Arziyaan de raha dil’ is good.
Director: Samar Shaikh Writer: Sanyukta Chawla Music: Shantanu Moitra
Running Time: 122 minutes
It seems that this film has been made with two
primary objectives. Firstly, to encash a small budget meaningful cinema using
the gem of an actor, Vidya Balan, thereby replicating the success of ‘Kahani’.
Secondly, to showcase an under-represented Hyderabadi community in Bollywood
cinema. May be the Hyderabad ties of the producers have something to do with
this.
‘Kahani’ was a blockbuster because stalwart Vidya’s acting
was well supported by strong script and direction. ‘Bobby Jasoos’ has Vidya in
her full form. But the scripting needs a lot of fine tuning and the direction
is average. In ‘Kahani’, Sujoy Ghosh presented Kolkata, ‘the city of joy’ like
never before. In comparison, Samar Shaikh’s presentation of old Hyderabad is
plain vanilla. In spite of the casting of all acclaimed actors as character
artists, the required energy and richness in the scenes is missing.The backdrop of the movie is the over populated Mughalpura region of old Hyderabad. Bilkis (Vidya Balan), the eldest daughter of the conservative Ahmed family is a self taught and self proclaimed detective aka ‘jasoos’. She has no formal training in this area. But she avidly watches the hindi detective serials and calls herself ‘Bobby Jasoos’. She gets mundane detective jobs and roams fearless in all nooks and corners of Mughalpura at all times. In fact, she is the only one who takes her profession and her professional skills seriously till she is contacted by an elderly Anees Khan (Kiran Kumar). He maintains a rich but secretive personality and asks her to find three people, one after the other. For each endeavor, he pays her handsomely (a bit too much by her standards). But, as for the clues, he can only provide the name, age and birth mark of missing persons and not any photo. Bobby along with her working allies – Shetty (Prasad Barve), Munna (Akash Dahiya), Suhail (Tejas Mahajan), works on the assignments in her trademark ‘naïve but full-of-drama’ style. She gets success. But somewhere she gets suspicious of the whole operation and decides to unravel the root of the matter. Also, somewhere alongside she discovers mutual liking and love with Tasawur (Ali Fazal), a popular tv presenter who also lives in Mughalpura and assists her in her endeavors.
As expected, Vidya is flawless in her scenes. In her bid as the detective, she dons a wide range of makeovers – hobbling fakir, funny toothed palmist, fatso tv producer etc. She does a terrific job with each one of them. But most of these avatars simply zoom off the screen, without taking the required time and leaving the desired impact. Ali Fazal looks younger to her. But he acts well and matches her performance in the scenes where they are together. Arjan Bajwa (Lala) plays a goon and inspite of soorma and stubble, he looks like a hunk in all his scenes. His acting is nonchalant. As such, not many lines are given to him to deliver. Kiran Kumar has a substantial role and he could have made it impactful. Surprisingly, he did not. Instead, Supriya Pathak (Zebo, Bilkis’ mother) and Tanvi Azmi (Kausar, Bilkis’ khaala) have simple roles, but they leave impact! Rajendra Gupta (Bilkis’ father) and Benaf Dadachanji (Noor, Bilkis’ sister) are good as well. Rest are OK. Cinematography is good. Music is average. However, the number ‘Arziyaan de raha dil’ is good.
All in all, it’s a sweet and clean movie with Vidya
occupying more than 90% of the screen time.
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