Movie Review - Jia Aur Jia – By Suhel Johar

Jia Aur Jia Is A FLOP Show From The Word Go.

Directed by debutante Howard Rosemeyer Jia Aur Jia is a female-oriented road film. Starring Richa Chaddha and Kalki Koechlin in the lead roles, the film also features  Arslan Goni in a prominent role.

The title of the film clearly shows that film is about two Jias — Jia Venkatram, the role played by Richa Chadha and Jia Garewal, the role played by Kalki Koechlin. Both Jia Venkatram and Jia Garewal are unexpected tour partners, who are on a budget trip to Sweden.

Both explore new things about each other in which few things shock both girls. There they meet a slouchy guy Vaasu Krishnan (Arslan Goni), who claims to do nothing in his life because of his rich dad and that’s what most of the guys in Sweden do. All of a sudden they start partying with this new person, the duo then become trio which emerges a love triangle between three.

The film ends with a weird predictable twist of one Jia going to die soon and desires to live life like a boss. She gets married on the trip itself and everything just didn’t make sense at all.

There is lack of good scenes with honesty. The duo’s road trip could have been amazing if it not a haphazard storytelling technique. The amateur plot and not so funny one-liners seem extremely unnecessary, make the film boring. Jia Aur Jia with a running time of only 90 minutes is the best part of the film but the film fails miserably to impress and is unable to hold the audience’s interest in the film. The film is flawed, and it doesn’t entirely convince us about the story. A lazy script and loose humour will leave you bored till the end.

Howard Rosemeyer’s directorial approach lacks the formal polish of trained hands even though he started his career as an assistant director to Pradeep Sarkar. One can avoid bad direction if a story is a good but bad direction along with bad script will take you to nowhere. Mudassar Aziz as the story writer and dialogue writer of the film along with Farhajaan Sheikh as the script writer turn out a damp squib. Cinematography by Shakil A. Khan is below par. Editing by Prashant Singh Rathore and Sandeep Kurup is bad. Music by Sachin Gupta and Nisschal Zaveri also failed to spread any magic. 

Performancewise, Kalki Koechlin tries hard to be a sweet, innocent, out-going woman but fails miserably because of the stereotypical characterization. Similarly, Richa Chadha’s uptight attitude as a banker is nothing but unconvincing. Arslan Goni fails to make his mark in his debut film.  

On the whole, Jia Aur Jia is a forgettable film.