madanmarwah

The first one of the franchise has lawyer Jolly 1 ( Arshad Warsi) fight a case to expose a hit and run accident. Judge Tripathi is played by Saurabh Shukla. Warsi's romantic interest is played by Amrita Rao. The second movie Jolly 2 is played by Akshay Kumar. He fights a case to expose a fake police encounter. Akshay's love interest is Huma Qureshi. The judge is again Saurab Shukla. Jolly 3 is a combo of both casts and the issue tackled is farmers' land taken over by greedy developers. All three are entertaining movies and I feel the first was best, the second was a notch less and this one is equally good.

It is clear that Director Subhash Kapoor has kept entertainment of audiences in mind and that is commendable even though in this movie he has over stretched the credibility part. The fun element has been unabashedly kept at the forefront.( Here the romantically inclined judge goes on a date with a lady police official with comic results.).The banter, bickering and the repartee between both lawyers make the scenes enjoyable. Both Akshay and Arshad make the best of the comic scenes while Saurab Shukla is good as usual as the harassed judge.

There are some movies which have an outstanding all round quality and which leave a strong impression on audiences. This movie is one such. There is mainstream commercial cinema and arthouse parallel cinema but the best is outstanding cinema like this one.

The plot in brief. In rural India two close friends not so well off share a special bond. Both have ambitions to join the Indian Police service but their efforts do not give them desirable results. One of them faces racial discrimination due to his caste while the other faces acute financial problems mainly because of his father's ill health. Circumstances separate them and bring them together again under tragic circumstances.

The storyline, direction, acting, production design, cinematography etc are all top class. Giving the movie class are the performances of young Ishan Khatter and Vishal Jethwa who have lived the roles they play and all scenes enacted by them are truly realistic . Credit must be given to director Neeraj Ghaywan for super storytelling and presenting a narrative which keeps you riveted and moves you to tears. All scenes are authentic, heart tugging and profoundly touching. The issues effectively depicted are racial discrimination, poverty, caste politics, class struggles, communal hatred, career choices, ambition etc. Both boys go through a series of physical sufferings, hardships, acute sadness frustration and humiliation. The prejudices, harsh truths and raw emotions shown appear extremely authentic.

This movie is immensely underwhelming and disappointing to say the least considering we have Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield in the cast. Both could not save this messed up, muddled up and pretentious fare. The plot in brief. A philosophy professor Alma ( Julia Roberts) from Yale university finds herself in a complex situation when one of her students confides to her that she was assaulted by a known faculty member Hank ( Andrew Garfield) . When Alma confronts Hank and questions him regarding this accusation he says it is fabricated by the student and nothing happened. Alma is in a serious dilemma and doesn't know whom to believe. Despite her anxiety issues Alma decides to solve this issue amicably.

Director Luca Guadagnino known for " Challengers " and " Call me by your name " could not do much with an inconsistent screenplay which is loaded with verbose dialogue in long duration scenes of philosophy. The pace is painfully slow and the scenes appear poorly executed. The narrative lacks clarity and is erratic which makes it uninteresting at many places. The characters are sketchy and lack depth. I felt that the runtime could be reduced by 30 minutes to make a better movie.