Delectable Detours 1 : Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na

Jaane tu ya Jaane Na is easily THE release of the summer!! Oodles of fun, frolic and pep… some rivetingly refreshing performances…a thoroughly enjoyable, sarcastic, spoof-like storyline…and, needless to say, the extraordinary music… all come together in Rahmanic (synonymous with perfect, wat say) harmony to give you a delightful movie with the style, class and identifiability of dch (minus the thirty somethings who played college kids), the humour and romance of Jab we met and one more significantly fantastic feature that both these films could not boast of…A R RAHMAN! Kabhi Kabhi Aditi is one of the sweetest, most romantic songs to have come out in recent times and it sets the tune for the entire movie…

Moving on to the performances… Debutante Imraan, with his chocolate boy innocence and dazzlingly cute smile captures your heart and holds it firmly throughout the film… he’s here to stay and under the tutelage of maamu Aamir, is bound to reach great heights… Genelia, as the catty Meow, all giggles and effervescence in the first half and also as the insecure and moody Aditi in the second, has played her role with elan… the friends are adorable… and so is Naseeruddin Shah as the photo dad… Ratna Pathak Shah is superb as the gutsy mother and Paresh Rawal is outstanding as the annoying naam-ke-vaste villain…

Jaane tu is about relationships. The relationships that, during the phase when we’re just entering adulthood with unrealistic hopes and custom-made rosy-eyed glasses, shape our lives and define who we are…mother and son…brother and sister…unrequited love…friendship…the thin red line between love and friendship…and, enchantingly, the relationship between a father’s photograph and his son…And with its talented supporting cast, the film portrays these relationships with panache… the selfless support and love of the mother who understands her young son’s every smile and whimper…the adoring son who will do anything to live up to the promise he made to his mom…the proud and eager father who does everything he can from the confining limits of death and a photo frame to ensure that his son fulfills his destiny… the brother who annoys his sister at every available opportunity just so that she would have something (in our dirty mouthed heroine’s case atleast a swearword or two) to say to him…the friend who, though madly in love with the protagonist, finally learns to swallow her heart and move on…and the protagonists, who don’t realize, until they drift apart and into their separate lives and romances, that they are, as everyone they knew so confidently avowed, actually in love…

But nothing…not even an Aamir Khan film, is flawless….and the movie does have its blemishes…Firstly, though Genelia’s performance is captivating, to say the least, she has a lot of work to do on her hindi diction…next, the first three songs, each one a gem, have been thrust together….however, the virtuosity of Rahman is such that you still end up enjoying them to the hilt…most importantly, the storyline… you might not notice it because of the energy and vibrance of the narration but it kinda gets into a slump in the middle…but with the enormously clichéd Knight-on-white-stallion and scramble-in-airport climax, you kinda forget the lull…

What I can promise you is that you'll come out of the theatre with a wide grin on your face... evoking nostalgic smiles from the middle-aged, knowing nods from the teeny-boppers, and eager dreamy-eyed excitement from the kids, Jaane tu is a film you‘ll just love to love… probably even against your better judgement… don’t mistake me, it’s a film that achieves, and spectacularly at that, what it sets out to achieve…and that is two-and-a-half hours of refreshing fun, rejuvenating music and youthful excitement…what I meant was, in what was an extremely dry summer season for movie buffs, when tamil cinema was catering to the front benchers and getting more and more violence-based and when good bollywood cinema has come to mean serious issue-based we’ll-make-you-think ‘ers (with a handful of exceptions like Jab we met but even that gets a little tedious in the middle), this movie, with no serious plot, no dramatic twists, no menacing villains (except the not-at-all-menacing and charismatic-as-usual Paresh Rawal),basically no bollywood histrionics and melodrama, is breezy, light-hearted and simply invigorating in its freshness and inimitable charm…