Review: Jabardasth - a Deja Vu feeling

If you've liked 'Band Baaja Baraat', the cool Yashraj Films movie with Ranvir and Anushka in the lead, you will like this one. But then again, how would you like it if it were a rip off of the same?

With 60 plus cases and 15 States on pursuit of him, Byrraju (Siddharth), a conman, flees from getting married to Bihari Babu's (Shayaji Shinde) sister. Raju lands in Hyderabad after a gap of five years and with the help of his friend who Raju has cheated earlier, plans to set-up a business.

Raju, a known face in the city for his frauds, finds people who are on the lookout for him. One such incident leads him to overhear Shreya (Samantha) discuss her plans of turning into a wedding planner with younger sister. Of course, she is also unhappy with her mom's groom-finding spree.

She is keen on meeting the top wedding planner Pinky Sharma in town the next day to work under her. Elated by Shreya's idea, Raju proposes the same to Pinky and he is roped in by her much to the shock of Shreya who was in line after Raju to explain her proposal. Eventually, Shreya and join the happening event management firm.

However, both quit the company for a professional reason and setup their own company - Shreya's Media - together. In due course, their company blossoms for a while before they part ways. Seen somewhere? Yes, exactly the story of 2010 B'wood hit 'Band Baaja Baaraat' (BBB). What next of 'Jabardasth' story? Please tune into Set Max on weekends.

What's new in store when the first half of the story is literally a rip off of 'BBB'? Nothing, seriously. And the film suffers here big time. Bread pakoda boy (Ranveer Singh) becomes mass Raju and the ambitious Shruti (Anushka Sharma) turns into Shreya - the only difference being that Bittu aka Ranveer is a not a conman. Nandini Reddy's script appears to deviate from the 'BBB' plot in the latter half, but the similarities strike you even though they may not be intentional.

Unlike her debut film 'Ala Modalaindi' where the situations lead to original humour, forced humour takes centre stage here. The sequences leading to both Raju and Shreya deciding to start Shreyas Media are contrived and hardly add to the emotional aspect of the movie when it was the need for a solid foundation.

Writing is plain mediocre and it causes the maximum damage like the running time (BBB' scored because of the refreshing script though everyone would have predicted what the end would be). Not just the story, a background tune in the anti-penultimate portion too, is lifted from 'BBB'.

Aside the weak links, Siddharth and Samantha, like the 'BBB' couple set high standards. With a lover boy image tagged to him, the actor, who mouth Shortsknicker for Schwarzenegger, Baggar for Beggar and contact for contract brings in his experience to own Byrraju.

And his leading lady, Samantha besides looking eye-candy delivers a good performance. Together they cause one to sit through the motions. Nithya and Srihari in brief cameos add to the film while Nandini's discovery, Thagobothu Ramesh fails to recreate the magic that he did for her earlier. Blame the writing please!

For people who watched 'BBB' in theatres and on Set Max multiple times, 'Jabardasth' is a been there seen that. Yash Raj films is bound to take the issue seriously considering that they've devised plans to get into the south market with the Telugu-Tamil remake of 'BBB'.