Why Jitendra Kumar’s Jaadugar misses the Panchayat magic

By now, Jitendra Kumar’ s name in the credits of a film or series is enough to attract a robust opening viewership in the OTT space. The consecutive brilliant shows of the new seasons of Kota Factory and Panchayat, both toplined by the actor, only bolstered the actor’s credibility, adding to a loyal fan base that identifies with his disarming, son-of-soil image. It is an appeal the actor has carefully cultivated over the years, through early shows as TVF Pitchers and TVF Bachelors before courting a bit of the Bollywood spotlight with unconventional roles in Gone Kesh and Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan .

When Kumar returned on his chosen turf of OTT with last week’s _Jaaduga_r, it came as no surprise that the film garnered whopping views. Besides riding the immediate hype of Panchayat and Kota Factory, Jaadugar boasted of all the trappings that fans have come to look forward to in a Jitendra Kumar show. To begin with, the film cast the actor as a small-town hero within the familiarity of his set image. The effort was also clearly meant to take him to spaces he had never been before — as a romantic hero and a character with a hint of grey (at least, as much of it that a feel-good script would allow him to portray). The film’s being a generic combination — of rom-com cliches, coming-of-age melodrama about small-town aspirations and an underdog sports drama about a mohalla football club — meant the actor had greater room to exude versatility. Jaadugar, in effect, seemed like an ideal attempt that would prove the middle-class hero of Panchayat was now good enough to carry a near-three hour feature film on his shoulder.

Yet, Jaadugar is no _Panchaya_t. Gloss over the publicity blitz around the film finding a top 10 slot on the OTT platform it dropped on, and you realise it will probably be counted among Kumar’s weaker works. The irony is Kumar himself expectedly maintains fine form as actor even as the film’s narrative struggles to strike a balance between its assortment of genres. As an unnecessarily stretched runtime of around 166 minutes plays out, the script threatens to turn into a meandering mess where sub plots pertaining to the hero’s romance and dreams to be a magician are forcibly juxtaposed onto the angle involving the sporting action.

Unlike most TVF productions, the makers of Jaadugar cannot seem to decide what approach to take with storytelling. Director Sameer Saxena and writer Biswapati Sarkar start off narrating the story of a small-town guy who doesn’t take anything in life — including his girlfriend — seriously. He wants to be a magician like his ‘guruji’ but has no clue of how to go about it. He is so preoccupied with himself that he doesn’t even know his girlfriend’s surname, we are to believe. The quirky character profile would be enough to create an interesting screenplay about small-town youth, but Saxena and Sarkar choose to throw the football angle into it. Since sporting action tends to provide maximum drama among the film’s three primary tracks, the makers try fashioning an extended climax sequence involving football. The final match is hardly engaging, and its message, about the resilience of underdogs, is too jaded.

There is an element of honesty you always find in TVF shows and films that extend right to the characters. You can effortlessly identify with Panchayat secretary Abhishek Tripathi or ‘Pradhan-pati’ Brij Bhushan Dubey in Panchayat. Kumar’s own Jeetu Bhaiya of Kota Factory could be any lecturer in an average Kota coaching institute. The trouble with Jaadugar is its characters lack resonance. They don’t linger in mind mainly due to the unconvincing way in which they are created and executed.

In a few cases, characters have actually been named in a way that they may ‘guide’ the audience about their purpose of existence within the screenplay. The first girlfriend, with whom the hero breaks up right at the start of the film is called is Icchha, which translates to desire or longing, thereby underlining unrequited love. The girl in whom he finally finds true love is called Disha, meaning purpose or direction. The formula harks back to Bollywood’s days when the lover-boy in Rajshri films was invariably called Prem.

Jaadugar also has to be the most predictable of TVF productions in a while. Everything about the film seems made up of leftover formula from sundry tales of melodrama. These include scenes of random pep talk about realising dreams, the sudden change of heart certain characters go through, the cliched manner in which a significant father-daughter relationship is revealed right in the end (you’ll probably guess it long before), or the very Lagaan-esque approach to get an underdog team up and running. It all adds up to creating a mix that is far below what we have come to hope for every time we see the names Jitendra Kumar and TVF in the credits of a film or a show.

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR.

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