[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]
An evil police inspector is in the witness box, about to face questions from the earnest and determined prosecution. He's calm, but the glint in his eye is menacing. Clearly he is a staple character in a simplistic Hindi film that wants to win over its audience, and for that it takes the liberty of overlooking logic in a few places. I know this because only in such a film can one find the defendant sullen when he is asked to step into the witness box, as if he didn’t expect it.
The prosecution begins with his questions, but the defendant cuts him off by murmuring a threat. In a court of law, in front of judges, lawyers, people.
Yes, this must be a Hindi film. I have no reason to suspect otherwise. The defendant has no respect for the judicial system. The lawyer doesn’t step back; he comes up with his own smart-alecky reply. We have seen this before. In a carelessly-written exchange in Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s Pink, the bad guy mutters, “You don’t know who you are talking to,” through gritted teeth to the defendants’ lawyer while under questioning. For how long will baddies in Hindi courtroom-dramas be written so loosely, I wonder. They are not complex individuals. They are one-note villains whose only job is to be as evil as they can so that our virtuous heroes can get the better of them in the rousing climax for the sake of catharsis. Makes for a rather dull watch, I say.
Neither sharp enough for a satire, nor taut enough for a courtroom-drama, nor as insightful as the film it thinks it is, Subhash Kapoor's Jolly LLB 2 is a farce that goes on for too long. It is a sequel – was it really necessary to make one? – to a modest if flawed film that won us over by its sincerity. But that sincerity is lacking this time around. It’s far more ambitious, with more focus on the absurdities that are seen in an Indian court of law everyday, but so insipid is its approach that it eventually becomes a poorly conceived attempt at satire.
I have always believed that the opening scene says a lot about what kind of film the makers wished to make. In Jolly LLB 2, the answers to an English exam are revealed over a loudspeaker by a sly gent who knows how to go about doing business with slyer people. It’s an absurd scene but one that is also undeniably amusing. (I fervently hoped watching it that the film won’t end up being a hodgepodge of farce and melodrama, which is exactly what it ends up being.) Jolly a.k.a., Jagdishwar Mishra grinds away in the office of a reputed lawyer everyday, barely wringing more respect than a common peon, and dreams of starting his own practice. He has a wife and son whom we don’t see much of. He has an old father who wants to see him succeed. He’s somehow making ends meet.
And herein lies the film’s first problem. What kind of a man is this Jolly? What makes him tick? Ambition? Wanting to make his father proud? Provide a better life for his wife and son? We are not told. The film treats them as secondary characters, using them to mine drama for tears. They vanish for long periods of time and magically reappear in the film’s more dramatic bits. We do not get to understand them, empathise with them. Nor Jolly. We are forced to think he's pleasant and honest because he has a smile permanently stuck on his face and notices the ones who are really in need of help in the crowd. We don't get to see him do something that earns our affection for him. It's puzzling. What good can come from a film whose lead character is such a mystery and its villain so run-of-the-mill?
Jolly bungles up in a big way. The pregnant widow of a man killed in a fake encounter commits suicide when she becomes disillusioned with the world and with him, and he blames himself. It compels him to study her case, to fight her fight for her. It’s interesting to see a commercial film tackling the critical subject of fake encounters and how the people involved resort to untangle themselves from the mess they create, but Jolly LLB 2 plays it safe. It produces an oversimplified, easy-to-follow case for us. A man is gunned down in cold blood by an inspector who only wants a promotion. He is promptly written off as a terrorist, the inspector gets his promotion, and the case gets swept under the carpet. Until our hero comes in.
Kapoor is no stranger to satire. He made the sharply-written Phas Gaye Re Obama in 2010. He deftly mixes social commentary with humour. But here, he starts off on the wrong foot and doesn’t find his rhythm till the end. It’s haphazardly put together, as if the makers weren’t entirely show if they want to make a satire or courtroom-drama, so they settle for something in between. There are a few bafflingly absurd bits, like burkha-clad women playing a cricket match, that are mildly amusing at best but fail to signify anything substantial.
When Jolly LLB 2 does turn into a full-blown courtroom-drama in the second half, it becomes considerably more engaging. There are pompous one-liners delivered with great gusto, but I’m afraid none of them are particularly memorable. Annu Kapoor, playing a reputed lawyer against whom Jolly goes, sleepwalks through his role. He’s very watchable. But I wonder: What makes him a ‘reputed lawyer’? He gets his share of the one-liners, but his character lacks the shrewdness and sophistication that Boman Irani’s character had in Jolly LLB. We are told he is a reputed lawyer, but we do not see it.
Jolly LLB 2’s biggest undoing, however, is how it portrays the Indian judicial system. I do understand what purpose a satire serves, what purpose cinema serves in general, but even a satire must contain some amount of truth. In Jolly LLB 2, we see Jolly ‘kidnapping’ a man undergoing trial and who has been accused of abetting terrorism to testify in court for him, and the judge allows him to. (The man turns out to be innocent after all, but that’s stretching credibility.) We see a narco-analysis test being submitted as evidence to incriminate a man of perjury. To the best of my knowledge, a narco-analysis test is inadmissible as evidence in an Indian court. (A more informed piece on this titled “Brief encounter: Who wins in the case of ‘Jolly LLB 2’ versus authenticity” can be found on Scroll.in.)
The problem with these fallacies is that they show the makers are themselves ignorant about the judicial system they want to poke fun of. While their intentions might be noble, it comes across as lazy or worse, ill-informed.
The saving grace in this film comes in the form of Saurabh Shukla. The veteran is at his very best here, and his Judge Tripathi, who makes some rather tall decisions for a judge, I must say, is like the first breath of fresh air after days in a windowless room. He’s funny, comforting, and fun to watch, and injects the film with life when it seems to be failing. He even gets a nice little speech in the end about how the job of a judge isn’t easy, how even when the judicial system is flimsy millions of citizens still trust it will give them justice. It’s one of the high points in a film that is evidently in short supply of them.
Jolly LLB 2 is the kind of family-friendly film that seems to be carefully engineered to do well commercially. It has all the right ingredients for it. What it desperately needed was insight.
(Not For Reproduction)
An evil police inspector is in the witness box, about to face questions from the earnest and determined prosecution. He's calm, but the glint in his eye is menacing. Clearly he is a staple character in a simplistic Hindi film that wants to win over its audience, and for that it takes the liberty of overlooking logic in a few places. I know this because only in such a film can one find the defendant sullen when he is asked to step into the witness box, as if he didn’t expect it.
The prosecution begins with his questions, but the defendant cuts him off by murmuring a threat. In a court of law, in front of judges, lawyers, people.
Yes, this must be a Hindi film. I have no reason to suspect otherwise. The defendant has no respect for the judicial system. The lawyer doesn’t step back; he comes up with his own smart-alecky reply. We have seen this before. In a carelessly-written exchange in Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s Pink, the bad guy mutters, “You don’t know who you are talking to,” through gritted teeth to the defendants’ lawyer while under questioning. For how long will baddies in Hindi courtroom-dramas be written so loosely, I wonder. They are not complex individuals. They are one-note villains whose only job is to be as evil as they can so that our virtuous heroes can get the better of them in the rousing climax for the sake of catharsis. Makes for a rather dull watch, I say.
Neither sharp enough for a satire, nor taut enough for a courtroom-drama, nor as insightful as the film it thinks it is, Subhash Kapoor's Jolly LLB 2 is a farce that goes on for too long. It is a sequel – was it really necessary to make one? – to a modest if flawed film that won us over by its sincerity. But that sincerity is lacking this time around. It’s far more ambitious, with more focus on the absurdities that are seen in an Indian court of law everyday, but so insipid is its approach that it eventually becomes a poorly conceived attempt at satire.
I have always believed that the opening scene says a lot about what kind of film the makers wished to make. In Jolly LLB 2, the answers to an English exam are revealed over a loudspeaker by a sly gent who knows how to go about doing business with slyer people. It’s an absurd scene but one that is also undeniably amusing. (I fervently hoped watching it that the film won’t end up being a hodgepodge of farce and melodrama, which is exactly what it ends up being.) Jolly a.k.a., Jagdishwar Mishra grinds away in the office of a reputed lawyer everyday, barely wringing more respect than a common peon, and dreams of starting his own practice. He has a wife and son whom we don’t see much of. He has an old father who wants to see him succeed. He’s somehow making ends meet.
And herein lies the film’s first problem. What kind of a man is this Jolly? What makes him tick? Ambition? Wanting to make his father proud? Provide a better life for his wife and son? We are not told. The film treats them as secondary characters, using them to mine drama for tears. They vanish for long periods of time and magically reappear in the film’s more dramatic bits. We do not get to understand them, empathise with them. Nor Jolly. We are forced to think he's pleasant and honest because he has a smile permanently stuck on his face and notices the ones who are really in need of help in the crowd. We don't get to see him do something that earns our affection for him. It's puzzling. What good can come from a film whose lead character is such a mystery and its villain so run-of-the-mill?
Jolly bungles up in a big way. The pregnant widow of a man killed in a fake encounter commits suicide when she becomes disillusioned with the world and with him, and he blames himself. It compels him to study her case, to fight her fight for her. It’s interesting to see a commercial film tackling the critical subject of fake encounters and how the people involved resort to untangle themselves from the mess they create, but Jolly LLB 2 plays it safe. It produces an oversimplified, easy-to-follow case for us. A man is gunned down in cold blood by an inspector who only wants a promotion. He is promptly written off as a terrorist, the inspector gets his promotion, and the case gets swept under the carpet. Until our hero comes in.
Kapoor is no stranger to satire. He made the sharply-written Phas Gaye Re Obama in 2010. He deftly mixes social commentary with humour. But here, he starts off on the wrong foot and doesn’t find his rhythm till the end. It’s haphazardly put together, as if the makers weren’t entirely show if they want to make a satire or courtroom-drama, so they settle for something in between. There are a few bafflingly absurd bits, like burkha-clad women playing a cricket match, that are mildly amusing at best but fail to signify anything substantial.
When Jolly LLB 2 does turn into a full-blown courtroom-drama in the second half, it becomes considerably more engaging. There are pompous one-liners delivered with great gusto, but I’m afraid none of them are particularly memorable. Annu Kapoor, playing a reputed lawyer against whom Jolly goes, sleepwalks through his role. He’s very watchable. But I wonder: What makes him a ‘reputed lawyer’? He gets his share of the one-liners, but his character lacks the shrewdness and sophistication that Boman Irani’s character had in Jolly LLB. We are told he is a reputed lawyer, but we do not see it.
Jolly LLB 2’s biggest undoing, however, is how it portrays the Indian judicial system. I do understand what purpose a satire serves, what purpose cinema serves in general, but even a satire must contain some amount of truth. In Jolly LLB 2, we see Jolly ‘kidnapping’ a man undergoing trial and who has been accused of abetting terrorism to testify in court for him, and the judge allows him to. (The man turns out to be innocent after all, but that’s stretching credibility.) We see a narco-analysis test being submitted as evidence to incriminate a man of perjury. To the best of my knowledge, a narco-analysis test is inadmissible as evidence in an Indian court. (A more informed piece on this titled “Brief encounter: Who wins in the case of ‘Jolly LLB 2’ versus authenticity” can be found on Scroll.in.)
The problem with these fallacies is that they show the makers are themselves ignorant about the judicial system they want to poke fun of. While their intentions might be noble, it comes across as lazy or worse, ill-informed.
The saving grace in this film comes in the form of Saurabh Shukla. The veteran is at his very best here, and his Judge Tripathi, who makes some rather tall decisions for a judge, I must say, is like the first breath of fresh air after days in a windowless room. He’s funny, comforting, and fun to watch, and injects the film with life when it seems to be failing. He even gets a nice little speech in the end about how the job of a judge isn’t easy, how even when the judicial system is flimsy millions of citizens still trust it will give them justice. It’s one of the high points in a film that is evidently in short supply of them.
Jolly LLB 2 is the kind of family-friendly film that seems to be carefully engineered to do well commercially. It has all the right ingredients for it. What it desperately needed was insight.
(Not For Reproduction)
