Jug Jugg Jeeyo review: The Bollywood marriage story

Kiara Advani and Varun Dhawan in 'Jugjugg Jeeyo', which released in theatres on June 24, 2022.

The love story begins on a highly retro note. The local Romeo Kukku Saini (Varun Dhawan), brawny and every bit the cardboard puttar reigning over mustard fields and inherited wealth, proposes to Naina Sharma (Kiara Advani), the sister of his best friend Gurpreet (Maniesh Paul), in what passes off among the folks of this town as radically romantic: Hold the marker, and tick your answer right on Kukku’s ripped torso. She ticks yes, of course.

Five years later, the couple is in cold Toronto—she an HR executive in pant suits, and he a bouncer at a night club wiping vomit off drunk weekend clubbers. The couple is disconnected and about to separate, but only after the wedding of Naina’s childhood friend Ginny (Prajakta Koli), Kukku’s only sibling.

Meanwhile, as they soon discover upon reaching their small town in Punjab, Kukku’s father Bheem (Anil Kapoor) is having his own share of marital disengagement. He is in love with Meera (Tisca Chopra), Kukku’s former school teacher, and wants to divorce his wife of 30-plus years, Geeta (Neetu Kapoor).

Director Raj Mehta and his writers Rishhabh Sharma, Anurag Singh, Sumit Batheja and Neeraj Udhawani are, however, less interested in the why and how of the relationships souring. A song and dance number softens every twist and every blowout between the couples. Their problems, especially Kukku and Naina’s, erupt in high-decibel verbal combats blaming who is right and who is wrong. And then a song interrupts the uneasiness.

The entire cast has a hurried, high-decibel energy, commensurate with the frenzied dialogues and a loud, mostly witless humour that heavily accents the writing. Styling, art direction and the visual language—the entire look of the film is reminiscent of ’90s slick, an over-the-top gloss defines every frame.

Dhawan channelises the distressed “tubelight” awkwardly. Advani is not in Naina’s skin, the disconnection helped by the fact that hers is the most confused character the film. Neetu Kapoor as the matriarch, powerless most of the time, performs the role with elegance and certitude, a believable character.

In secondary roles, performances by Paul and Koli add to the film’s overblown tone. Anil Kapoor as a man in the throes of a life crisis - unable to discern his own mind, and mostly resorting to lies to survive - has the most humorous lines in the film. He has a spark that redeems an otherwise dull, yet extremely loud drama running into 150 minutes.

Neetu Kapoor and Anil Kapoor in 'Jugjugg Jeeyo'.

The songs, the dialogues and the constant bhangra hammering of the background score is an assault to the auricular nerves. But what jars the most is how the transition from a family thick in the throes of a split to one where the promise of everlasting love—and the sanctity of family and marriage—gets reiterated in the most mundane of ways.

None of the characters have convincing trajectories. As long as the loud Punjabiyat keeps getting louder, everything in this family drama is hunky-dory. Except for the already popular bhangra anthem, which is incidentally choreographed without any imagination, JugJugg Jeeyo is a boring wedding party.