Jayeshbhai Jordaar movie review: No ‘jor’ in this male saviour saga that can’t even capitalise on Ranveer Singh’s loveliness  

Language: Hindi 

Tattooing your film’s intended message on its forehead is a surefire way to ruin both that message and the messenger. Director Divyang Thakkar’s Jayeshbhai Jordaar may as well have carried a banner on screen throughout the narrative, akin to the mandated “cigarette smoking is injurious to health” for smoking scenes in India: “This film has been made to condemn female foeticide and demand that society stop viewing women as mere baby-producing machines, to inform a patriarchal public that sex determination tests are illegal, and convince them that sex is primarily an expression of love, not a mechanical act solely designed to yield heirs.”      

It may as well, considering how the team has prioritised these issues over the art of storytelling and their filmmaking craft.

Jayeshbhai Jordaar is set in rural Gujarat, home to Jayeshbhai (Ranveer Singh) who is a puppet in his autocratic father’s hands both on the professional and personal front. He is deeply in love with his wife Mudra but compelled by social and family pressure to treat her as a source of a son. We learn that one daughter was tolerated because everyone is allowed one galti (mistake), but a second would be inexcusable.    

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As the walls of patriarchy close in on him and Mudra, Jayesh goes on the warpath to rescue her and, as time goes by, all the women in his village.

Although Ranveer is the protagonist of this saga and its biggest star, and although he and Boman Irani as his Dad get most of the film’s screen time, the closing credits give precedence to the actors playing his daughter, wife and mother – Jia Vaidya, Shalini Pandey and Ratna Pathak Shah. Spare us this patronising tokenism, please, dear Hindi film industry, and next time, for a change, make a film on women’s rights centred around women instead of their gentlemen saviours.

This is not to suggest that stories of allies should not be told, but to ask why Hindi cinema consistently gravitates towards allies who emerge from dominant social groups rather than the many wonderful leaders from and of marginalised social groups that this country has produced. A recent case in point: _Jhund_.  

Even when recounting a legitimate tale of allyship, it is never acceptable to position allies as saviours and/or marginalise members of the marginalised group to whom the protagonist has extended support. Jayeshbhai Jordaar is completely and entirely focused on Jayesh, the women characters are weakly written and barely given space to shine.

In a screenplay over-crowded with social concerns wrapped in the comedy genre, the writing does not even display a depth of understanding of the subjects it has chosen to cover. For one, it takes extreme intelligence to take a stand on female foeticide without setting yourself up for an appropriation of your position by anti-abortionists, but well, an absence of nuance is another hallmark of Jayeshbhai Jordaar.  

From Gujarat, the film travels to a village in Haryana where years of female foeticide have led to such a poor sex ratio that scores of men have been forced to remain bachelors. Here and elsewhere in the narrative, the line unwittingly conveyed is that female foetuses should be allowed to survive because men need mothers and wives.

At another location, director Thakkar who also wrote Jayeshbhai Jordaar, reveals that he has not grasped the extreme danger faced by women in a community with a skewed sex ratio or the potential for exploitation in marriages arranged in such places by purchasing brides from other states.

Whatever Jayeshbhai Jordaar’s good intentions may be, they are lost to a poor comprehension of gender politics, lack of focus, a saviour complex and above all, ineffective storytelling.    

Jayeshbhai Jordaar’s sense of humour works only occasionally. The narrative lifts off late in the second half with an infusion of energy from a steady stream of new developments and a couple of good ideas, but by then the film is already past a point of no return.  

A circle of support – literal and figurative – formed by the women of a community yields the film’s only truly poignant moment. Another scene featuring a wall of muscular Haryanvi men confronting a wall of confounded Gujarati men might have been hilarious in a better film. In Jayeshbhai Jordaar, both these striking visuals and the implied metaphors are just too little too late.  

Two of the women in Jayeshbhai Jordaar look like they could have added up to something if the writer had paid just a little more attention to them. Sadly, Jayesh’s spirited sister (Deeksha Joshi) and feisty daughter, and the interesting actors playing them, are only briefly allowed to spread their wings, before the film returns the spotlight back to the only character it cares about: Jayesh himself.  

Shalini Pandey, whose filmography so far is dominated by Telugu and Tamil cinema, played the mute heroine who is pushed around and bullied into falling in love with the aggressive, toxic hero of _Arjun Reddy_    (2017, Telugu). The decision to cast her opposite a male star blazing with charisma is all the proof needed to establish that the makers of Jayeshbhai Jordaar do not want anyone but him to shine. The baby-faced Ms Pandey is no match for Ranveer, and is as dull and unmemorable here playing the spouse of a wonderfully supportive darling of a man as she was in that earlier film where she was meant to be intimidated by the male lead.  

The only selling point of Jayeshbhai Jordaar is Ranveer Singh. The actor plays a Gujarati without caricaturing Gujaratis, and transforms his body, body language and demeanour, his posture, his walk, his gestures and his entire personality to such an extent for this fictional character that it requires an effort to recall how, just a short while back, he had metamorphosed into one of India’s most well-known, well-loved sportspersons without mimicking him but by becoming the man in Kabir Khan’s _83_.  

What Jayeshbhai Jordaar stands for is encapsulated by the song ‘n’ dance segment accompanying the closing credits in which Jayesh sings about women while large groups of women dance, hang out and do sundry other things in the background. The keyword: background.  

Ranveer Singh’s arresting presence and investment in his character cannot save Jayeshbhai Jordaar from its writing and direction, both of which feature none of the jor contained in its title.  

Rating: 2 (out of 5 stars) 

This review was first published when Jayeshbhai Jordaar was released in theatres in May 2022. The film is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. 

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