{"id":7555,"date":"2016-04-19T10:45:50","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T05:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=7555"},"modified":"2016-04-19T10:45:50","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T05:15:50","slug":"good-luck-jerry-review-janhvi-kapoor-anchors-a-delightfully-airy-crime-caper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=7555","title":{"rendered":"Good Luck Jerry review: Janhvi Kapoor Anchors a Delightfully Airy Crime Caper"},"content":{"rendered":"\nA<\/span> young Bihari migrant woman gets embroiled in the drug trade in Punjab, to unpleasant consequences. We\u2019ve seen a version of this story on screen before. In Abhishek Chaubey\u2019s Udta Punjab (2016)<\/em>, what the woman faces on that path is visibly ghastly. She is at the mercy of fate and nothing else, surviving the ordeal only because we perhaps like our movies to end a certain way. After starting with a similar one-liner, Sidharth Sen\u2019s Good Luck Jerry follows a different path. If it weren\u2019t for the fact that Good Luck Jerry relentlessly kneels at the altar of comedy, this would have been an ungodly story too. Thankfully, the film makes all its socio-cultural observations on the sly, underneath its brand of charming, escapist situational humour.\n\nThe world is a hostile, ugly place for women \u2013 the film makes its stance quite clear. When Jerry walks through a lane, at least a few pairs of male eyes follow her all the way through. Multiple men openly vie for her affection, even though she clearly doesn\u2019t fancy any of them. If the men in question weren\u2019t goofily cute and fairly easy to keep at bay, we\u2019d call them creeps. But then, Jerry also happens to be the Indefatigable Woman\u2122 – a familiar presence in movies that Aanand L. Rai puts his name on. Think Tanu Weds Manu<\/em>, Manmarziyan, Happy Bhag Jayegi, Nil Battey Sannata<\/em> or Haseen Dillruba<\/em>, to name just a few. Jerry starts out a na\u00efve and fearful drug mule, who finds herself in the dastardly business only because she needs maa ke ilaaj ke paise. By the end of it though, she could as well introduce herself as, \u2018Jerry. Poora naam – Jaya Kumari. Maa ka naam – Sharbati\u2026\u2019 Not that she turns into an actual mob boss, but she\u2019d definitely pass a gangster vibe-check.\n\n

Thankfully, the film makes all its socio-cultural observations on the sly, underneath its brand of charming, escapist situational humour.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nThere\u2019s a mad family of three women at the centre of the story. One mother and her two daughters, Jerry and Cherry. Each of these women has at least one man in love with them, but the menfolk are ultimately spectators in the game that\u2019s unfolding. This mad family doesn\u2019t strictly get along, though. Within the first few minutes, you\u2019ll encounter the film\u2019s sharpest taunt \u2013 in a heated argument, a daughter\u2019s insult to her mother is that she is just dad in a sari. It takes a second for the inversion of the who-wears-the-pants-in-the-house clich\u00e9 to sink in, but the film has already moved onto the setup for its next punchline.\n\nMinor characters and gags fly in your face. But every speaking part has been cast to perfection, the world-building in general is impeccable. At least you can say this about the largely underwhelming state of Hindi cinema \u2013 some of its movies have steadily been getting more adept at the \u2018small-town\u2019 tale, the ones rooted to a time and place that exude actual flavour. Quite an upgrade from the generic, \u2018feels like nowhere \u2019, NRI-pandering movies that were common to Bollywood two decades ago.\n\nKapoor isn\u2019t as visibly expressive as her illustrious mother was \u2013 she was, after all, a product of a different time and culture. But emotionally, the actor is all there, in the moment. The smile and turmoil both reach her eyes, which dance around to the rhythm of the scene. She hasn\u2019t had too long a career, so there\u2019s not much to compare; but this has to be her best performance yet. Good Luck Jerry is based on Nelson\u2019s 2018 Tamil film Kolaamavu Kokila<\/em>, which had Nayanthara play this part. I imagine Nayanthara did a stellar job with the character, probably nailing it like no one else. It also feels like Janhvi Kapoor\u2019s take on the character must be quite different from the superstar\u2019s portrayal.\n\n

Kapoor isn\u2019t as visibly expressive as her illustrious mother was \u2013 she was, after all, a product of a different time and culture. But emotionally, the actor is all there, in the moment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nYet, Good Luck Jerry is so much more than its young, gently-evolving lead actor. Mita Vashisht plays her mother Sharbati, to great effect. Deepak Dobriyal plays an amped up version of what the Vicky Kaushal character in Manmarziyan would probably be like for the India that\u2019s not on screen. He is one of Jerry\u2019s potential suitors, the \u2018hero\u2019 of his \u2018gully\u2019. The clich\u00e9s are written in strictly so they can be lampooned. Every other name in the cast \u2013 Neeraj Sood, Sushant Singh, Sahil Mehta, Jaswant Singh Dalal \u2013 all playing characters major and minor \u2013 are only a tick in the pros column.\n\nDirector Sidharth Sen, is clearly the person responsible for convincing you to be a willing participant in the shenanigans on display. In its finest comic scene, Good Luck Jerry is mostly wordless. A paranoid drug distributor doesn\u2019t let people speak in front of him, because even dogs have ears. (Earlier in the film, this man packs Jerry\u2019s mobile phone into a plastic cover and drops it into an aquarium, because privacy.) So, everyone has to introduce themselves in dumb charades \u2013 Jerry, her family and their extended coterie of men.\n\n

Clocking in at under two hours, Good Luck Jerry is the story of a woman who writes her own destiny while navigating a world that doesn\u2019t believe in her agency.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nThat is, until Deepak Dobriyal steps up and gives their real introduction, miming truth bombs that no one else will. There are also the tiny touches that might regale you. Like a drug dealer taking a minute to close one of those rectangular steel lunchboxes, used in a scene to conceal a packet of cocaine. If you\u2019ve carried your school lunch in one of those evil contraptions, you\u2019ll know how much they resist being closed, even the fasteners on either side giving up and deserting you sometimes. Sen\u2019s staging and control of the flow of the film is the prime reason why you\u2019ll be drawn in within minutes. Clocking in at under two hours, Good Luck Jerry is the story of a woman who writes her own destiny while navigating a world that doesn\u2019t believe in her agency. That makes it sound much denser than the light, airy streaming watch the film plays out as.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good Luck Jerry is anchored by a career-best performance by Kapoor and though it isn\u2019t deep or particularly inventive, the film is charming, entertaining and ludicrously simple, but in a good way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":459,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[141,2777,11780,3001,3845,5284,2027,2330,9149,11287],"class_list":["post-7555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-bollywood","tag-crime","tag-good-luck-jerry","tag-janhvi-kapoor","tag-kapoor","tag-kjo","tag-movie-review","tag-murder","tag-murder-mystery","tag-mystery"],"yoast_head":"\nGood Luck Jerry review: Janhvi Kapoor Anchors a Delightfully Airy Crime Caper<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Good Luck Jerry is anchored by a career-best performance by Kapoor and though it isn\u2019t deep or particularly inventive, 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