Jalaibee in one line is a jalaibee which has spirals just like the jalaibee (sweet) of friendship, relations, revenge, betrayal, politics, and cruelty. Some fellow bloggers promoted it as ‘Dark Comedy’, however, in my views it was not even comedy let alone dark comedy.
It was something different and I must give full marks to the punch lines since most of them were pretty much in good taste. It was an stimulating change to perceive since lately the tendency of jesting lines and lose meaning punches is on a high.
Film starts with the introduction of two young men who chose the erroneous path out of wrong choices and twist of fate. From that point onwards starts the phase of over built suspense, suspense could have been controlled a bit as this much suspense opened the prospect for film to become too predictable.
Film takes many twists and turns such as kidnaping of a potential prime minister, and uncalled for series of murders. While all this is going the dialogues of (Bagga) Ali Safina kept glee part alive.
Here I would like to say with Ali Safina and Danish Taimoor as Billu and Bagga filmmaker tried to pull the old tried and tested Jai and VIru kind of a duo where one is Angry Youngman and the other is a happy-go-lucky one.
Urdu accent of Wiqar Ali Khan (Ali) and English accent of Sabeeka Imam (Eman) was quite a “plastic ka accent”. The thing made me most uneasy was the display of liquor that profusely on screen, it might sound bit moral policing thing but seeing it that liberally on screen in a Pakistani film was bit of uneasy part.
Towards the end film could have been cut short to 90 minutes rather than the 110 minutes length, it became dragged and it give the impression like dialogues were injected just for the sake of it.
Interval of the film came at a breathtaking part and it was an interesting plot twist while things were becoming predictable uninterruptedly, however, the ending or the climax could have been done much better.
It was more of ‘Priyadarshan type’ of ending where whole cast of the film is put together in a scene and they start running wild in order to create comedy. In case of Jalibee it was killing spree rather than comedy scene with almost all cast running in the scene tough in that scene bright yellow Ford Mustang breaking into a brick wall was quite a sight on a cinema screen.
I think I have been too much of a critique about Jailaibee in above paragraph, but film was more positive than negative first of all the sound and camera work was amazing.
Islamabad looked great in the film and the sound felt so original and real which has been an issue with Pakistani films where sound of punch is still “aaaBhishuma!!!”.
I have quite strong reservation towards Item songs but I have to say Item song in this film was quite a pleasant surprise full marks to Zhalay Sarhadi (Bunno) who pulled it off so glowingly, her dress was good enough to not come under the radar of moral police and her dance moves were so sophisticated unlike the usual sight in item numbers.
Another thumbs up of item number is the lyrics of the song, today in the epoch of ingenious bankruptcy in writing lyrics this song was crafted very well (I would like to have a slower version of it as it can be a great mellow number if anyone want to sing a cover of it).
Sajid Hassan’s (Akbar) acting was flawless, acting of Zhalay Sarhadi, and Ali Safina was quite in line to the requirement of role however Danish Taimoor over did it and was quite loud especially in the second half of the film.
Sabeeka Imam tried well for her first film she should get the due credit however it could have been better done, her role was quite in her comfort zone her real acting test can be in more challenging role however she proved to be a good model that can make screen look good with her presence.
The real surprise was the acting of Muhammad Ghous Pasha he actually did work hard for this role and result was quote impressive.
I have said earlier that I enjoyed the dialogues of the film they might felt off at times to the audience of Lahore and Karachi but (I am assuming) that is how the taste of Islamabad dialogue is, I liked it tough so full marks for that. By the way one dialogue was the best and show stopper, “Oh yen kya lashon ka jumma bazaar lagaya hua hay”.
Final virdict is that film is good and it is something for which we should support Pakistani cinema if without much support filmmakers can do such effort and bring some result just imagine if support from us the film viewers is shown how much potential to do good our cinema has.
We can digest blunders of Hollywood and monotonous stuff of Bollywood but we are not ready to support Pakistani cinema because we assume that it is “Tacky” this mindset is wrong we should support our cinema, our films because at the end of the day it is our own cinema produced by our own people and there is nothing better than entertainment created in-house.
My take on this film on the scale of 10 is 7 where one point is for the film being a Pakistani film. I would like to end this post with few lines dedicated especially to Zhalay Sarhadi who proved that she is a real multitalented artist who is a total package, if my predictions about film actors are as accurate and as they are in cricket and football (I pray that they are) then I would like to say that Zhalay Sarhadi is going to be the next big thing and the next (tough she has already become) femme fatale of Pakistani cinema particularly and Pakistani entertainment scene as a whole.
Cast:
Danish Taimoor
Ali Safina
Waqar Ali Khan
Zhalay Sarhadi
Adnan Jaffer
Sajid Hasan
Sabeeka Imam
Uzair Jaswal
Salman Shaukat
Director: Yasir Jaswal
Producer: Eman Binte Syed
Screenplay: Yasir Jaswal
Editing: Rizwan A.Q.
Music: Yasir Jaswal
Release Date: 20th March, 2015
Box Office: Domestic: Rs. 7.5 crore (USD 740,000)
Worldwide: Rs. 10.5 crore (USD 1 Million)
