Bobby Jasoos - Lacklustre.

Bobby Jasoos is the debut film of director Samar Shaikh and unfortunately it leaves much to be desired.

Set in Hyderabad, Bobby Jasoos tells the story of Bilqis, a woman from a humble background who has no interest in marriage or being a girl as defined by the society but instead dreams of becoming the best darn detective around. However the only cases Bilqis scores are about uncles wanting her to spy on their wife making eyes at the electrician or aunties wanting to know if their daughters are being the good girls they were raised to be. She also has the case of a crime show anchor, Tasawur (Ali Fazal) where her job is to get the dirt on prospective brides so that he can reject them with well found reason. Things change when Bilqis alias Bobby has a mysterious visitor who leaves her huge sums of money to find individuals, giving as details just their name, age and any sort of birthmark. Bilqis soon figures out that there might be something shady going on and tries to uncover the truth about these well paying cases.

Now that a synopsis of the film is done, one can get on to reflections which do not favour the film much. The film is unable to click till at least 20-30 minutes have passed and in that time you also have to bear overacting by Vidya Balan (a suprise there!) who speaks in a Hyderabadi accent so strong that it is almost a caricature. Ali Fazal is charming but only till the moment he starts dancing. There he is way too enthusiastic to pull off the SRK looks, poses and dance moves that he has been entrusted with and you can only feel sorry for the poor guy because he just cannot ape SRK and also he shouldnt. He has the capability of impressing the audiences by just being himself. Bilqis' family is the most impressive of the lot (with restrained acting and thankfully restrained accents) followed closely by Aakash Dahiya as Munna. He doesnt have much of a role but as Vidya's aide he does the job perfectly.

The film is lacklustre in every department. No great cinematography to do the bustling lanes of Hyderabad any sort of justice, no brilliant music score (cannot remember one tune and I saw the film yesterday and it was Shantanu Moitra who has done great work in films like Parineeta and Antaheen!), no brilliant acting [changing garbs is great, especially if you are an Indian actress who come up with gems like not wanting to play a mother on screen because they are in their 'primes' - side question here, if you are an actor should you not be open to EVERY type of role and try to make it convincing? - but just changing your look does not ensure acting, it means that the make-up department did a great work and you carried the look well but you still need to act once you get out of that look...] and the biggest flaw of all - NO story.

The story is such that it has no highs, no lows, no ‘clutch at the seat in worry and then pry away your fingers from the sponge in relief’ - no nothing. It is boring and anti climactic and all of this means that director Samar Shaikh needs to work very hard and choose better stories to work with and also draw out performances from every department because as of now he has a film which has nothing to offer in any department...except the make up - they did a good job.

However one thing must be commended and encouraged. It is a film with a woman leading the pack and for that the producers (Dia Mirza, Sahil Sanga and Reliance Entertainment) must be congratulated. Just hope the next time they get a better story and script and not reply solely on an actor's willingness to don different garbs. It may grab eyeballs but it does not make for good viable cinema.

Verdict - Can totally pass it.