Jodi Ekdin: A review

Ian Wyndham lives with his girlfriend Samantha Andrews. A busy businessman, Ian has little time for Samantha who is a musician. The first part of the story shows a day in their life that ends in a heated altercation between the two. Tired of being taken for granted, Samantha finally snaps and decides to end the relationship. She walks out of the restaurant and hails a cab. The cab meets with an accident and Samantha dies. A grief-stricken Ian returns home alone and the sweet memories lull him to sleep. The morning dawns and as always he wakes up to the voice of Samantha! Terrified, he slowly realises that it was all but a nightmare. However, as the day unfolds Ian comes across similar set of events and slowly it all starts to make sense. He has been given a second chance to alter the course of his life, to correct his mistakes. He tries to make it up to Samantha and at the end he swaps his girlfriend's fate with his own and dies saving her. Well that was Gil Junger's If only. Now replace the businessman Ian with the ad guy Neil (Indraneil) and Samantha with Nikita (Priyanka), and you have the story of Riingo's latest movie Jodi Ekdin (and of course as the credits roll you find no mention of the original movie!). However, Riingo does introduce a new character (which has its predecessors in multitudinous films varying from It's a Wonderful Life to Bruce Almighty) in the story – the roadside magician (Shaheb). He tries to talk sense to Neil and tells him how most people give up when things fall apart but a winner holds on to the pieces and starts rebuilding. All is well until the magician breaks into an over-pitched and out-of-context recitation of Tagore's "Amar e chetonar rongey" (which so far meant "the world is as you perceive it to be"), almost scaring you off the seat! Jodi Ekdin was pitched as the first Bengali movie to be dealing with live-in relationships. But the story is about the average urban couple – about one of them getting too busy with his/her professional life and eventually taking the other for granted. Indraneil is good as Neil and has potential to become one of the better actors of the industry. Rii as Nikita's friend does justice to her bit. Shaheb acts and overacts. And Priyanka tries her best to act (but fails most of the time). This is the second venture of National Award-winning duo Chandril and Anindyo as lyricists. But the songs of Jodi Ekdin have neither the melt-in-the-mouth feel of Antaheen nor the signature Chandrabindoo wit/sarcasm/humour. Instead, you have very ordinary Tollywoodish songs. Music is average. The choreography is brilliantly bad and reminds you of Bollywood of the '90s (especially the romantic songs of the expressionless action heroes - Suneil Shetty/Ajay Devgun/Sunny Deol). Most of the song/dance sequences are redundant and hamper the flow of the story. Embedded advertising is taken to a new (and scary) level and you have Deepika Padukone popping up recommending Fiama Di'Wills in the middle of the movie. One of the most serious allegations against Bengali filmmakers has been that they seldom experiment with camera angles. But one surely can't blame this movie of dull camera work. Riingo certainly knows how to move the camera and you have nice pan-zoom-stills and Dutch angles although the indiscriminate and random use of these at times makes the whole experience tremble on the brink of monotony. However, the shots are well-framed especially the outdoor ones, and the DI and the 5.1 digital mixing lends a sleek look. A tight editing might have managed to save the movie to some degree. And the question that is bound to haunt the audience is that how can Nikita escape such an accident without a single scratch while Neil, sitting just next to her, gets fatally wounded!