Strives to steadiness his feminism by humoring male infidelity and selfishness – Entertainment News, Firstpost

Jugjugg Jeeyo’s apologetic feminism aims to appeal to both feminists and conservatives. Consequently, it is neither here nor there, nor can it be anywhere.

In a way, the new Hindi film Jugjugg Jeeyo (Live Long and Prosper) reminds me of the recent Malayalam release Jo and Jo. The latter was about a daughter who was discriminated against by her mother, who let the girl do the housework while her son roamed free. Jo and Jo were so afraid of upsetting audiences beyond their threshold of tolerance for liberalism that whenever it showed the daughter rightfully protesting an injustice in the family, it was also quick to soften the blow by showing it played down her and her concerns.

Raj Mehta’s Jugjugg Jeeyo – written by Anurag Singh, Rishhabh Sharrma, Sumit Batheja and Neeraj Udhwani – is more committed to his ideals than Jo and Jo, but he too strives to soften the blow of his explicit feminism by balancing any criticism of the infidelity and the selfishness of a man in a marriage with quick changes to a tone of voice that makes the same behavior humorous.

Kiara Advani and Varun Dhawan in a still from Jugjugg Jeeyo

Kukoo Saini (Varun Dhawan) and Naina Sharma (Kiara Advani) rot in a cold marriage filled with bitterness. He resents her professional achievements because he switched countries to support her career and didn’t make it himself. The two decide to divorce. Shortly thereafter, Kukoo discovers that his father, who lives in Patiala, also wants to get out of his marriage of more than three decades. Bheem (Anil Kapoor) wants to separate from Kukoo’s mother Geeta (Neetu Kapoor), a traditional housewife. He was having an affair with a younger woman, Meera (Tisca Chopra).

Even in 2022, it’s hard to imagine a thoroughly commercial Hindi film openly calling a selfish husband selfish and condemning his infidelity.

Almost half a century after Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Abhimaan, it remains rare for a mainstream Hindi film to explore the social conditioning that breeds men who struggle to celebrate a woman’s accomplishments, unless their own careers outshine theirs. Jugjugg Jeeyo does all of this and more. Bravo! However, the film is damn careful. The narration is serious and heavy while focusing on Naina and Kukoo’s saga, it tends to be comical while focusing on Bheem, and the two stories seem to have been told in parallel so that Jugjugg wouldn’t jeeyo’s support for Naina hurts too much.

Even within the Bheem-Geeta equation, the authors hasten to assure us that when Bheem is called out for his reprehensible behavior, he won’t suffer too much, for after all he’s hahaha hohohohoho, just a man who’s his wife cheating and hehehe come on that doesn’t count as cheating as he and meera haven’t slept together yet and hahaha hohoho hehehe he wants a partner to serve him with all hands hahaha.

One way Jugjugg Jeeyo maintains his balancing act is by dissing Meera’s independence and dismissing her self-esteem as an unwillingness to perform the duties that dear lovely pativrata Geeta has been silently fulfilling for so long.

Jugjugg Jeeyo’s apologetic feminism aims to appeal to both feminists and conservatives. Consequently, it is neither here nor there, nor can it be anywhere.

However, this does not make the film a physically painful experience. As Jugjugg Jeeyo oscillates wildly between comedy and heaviness, occasionally inserting quiet counterpoints to its own overt progressiveness, one quality remains constant: loudness. Make that two qualities that also weighed on the interesting message in the director’s earlier film, Good Newwz: loudness and the stereotypical portrayal of Punjabis as a loud, boisterous community.

For the record, despite its inconsistent storytelling, I liked parts of Jugjugg Jeeyo. Varun Dhawan and Kiara Advani are a good match, this film gives Advani the kind of role she deserves and should get more of, Anil Kapoor is incredibly charming and energetic (although the film obviously abuses his charm and panache to make him terribly to make character appealing), Maniesh Paul as Naina’s brother exhibits solid comic timing at points, and the writers do well with depicting the support between Naina, Geeta, and Kukoo’s sister (Prajakta Koli) that defies Saas-Bahu stereotypes . Neetu Kapoor’s Geeta is neglected in the script during the first half – making placing her name as a lead in the opening credits a symbolic act a la Jayeshbhai Jordaar – but in the second half she gets time, space and one of the film’s best serious conversations .

Some of these elements work well enough that it would have been tempting to forgive Jugjugg Jeeyo for walking a feminist tightrope, but the film’s volume makes that impossible. The sound design relies on silence for just a tiny fraction of its 150 minute runtime, the soundtrack is deafening and the background music overwhelming. The outspoken humor is sometimes in bad taste and often childish, such as when a man declares that the only way for a man to brighten up is by “going potty or partying,” and elsewhere when a lad is advised never his “emotions or (chair) movements”. Oh God! rhymes! And the stripped down portrayal of the Punjabis in Jugjugg Jeeyo as hearty, talkative creatures for the umpteenth time is exhausting enough without a gritty song underscoring the community’s worldwide love of joie de vivre.

Jugjugg Jeeyo comes from a long tradition of Hindi cinema (Example: No Entry and the Masti series) in which male infidelity is treated as a comedic device, while a similar lens is of course untrained for female infidelity. It’s also an eardrum rupturing experience. Not every film can be great Indian cuisine in its take on patriarchy, but this one is a hyperventilating yo-and-yo that dilutes its profits with a heavy dose of backtracking and noise-making.

Rating: 2 (out of 5 stars)

Jug Jugg Jeeyo is in theaters now

Anna MM Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specializes in the interface between cinema and feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial

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