Jhoom Barabar Jhoom
Studio: Yash Raj
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Preity Zinta
Director: Shaad Ali
WorkNameSort: Jhoom Barabar Jhoom
Our Rating: 2.50
A big-budget, big-hearted old-school Bollywood blockbuster aimed straight at Punjabi NRIs in the U.K., Jhoom is an empty, frivolous and thoroughly calculating bit of fluff; it’s also ridiculously enjoyable. The winking acknowledgment of the film’s paper-thin plot ‘ a slightly scurrilous scamp (Abhishek Bachchan) and a prim, light-skinned desi girl (Preity Zinta) meet at a London train station and tell each other the romantic (and unbelievable) stories of how each met their respective intended ‘ is counterbalanced by self-aware song-and-dance numbers (several of which feature Amitabh Bachchan looking like a psychedelic Native American lounge singer). The resulting farce manages to be occasionally funny, which is surprising, given how much ground is retrod, how many blatant references to (far better) Bollywood classics there are and how brazenly market-savvy the film’s creative calculus is. That its theme song is repeated approximately 9 billion times throughout Jhoom‘s duration probably makes the film more memorable than it should be.
This article appears in Jun 20-26, 2007.