A Serving Of Jali Hui Jalaibee

There’s Jalaibee that’s orange-ish, sweet, drippy and twisted…. and then there’s Jalaibee that’s multicolored, repugnant, dry and just FUCKED UP!

Just when you think that Pakistani cinema was getting better with films like Na Maloom Afraad, Operation 21, Dukhtar and Waar (each with their fair share of flaws yet still praiseworthy) hitting screens both nationally and internationally, someone jumps right in the middle of everything and shits all over the #RevivalOfPakistaniCinema with a film like Jalaibee that is as bad as a cookery show of the ‘ooh so amazing I-did-this-first’ Chef Rahat! In fact, a lot more disastrous!

Incoherent… retarded… confused… messed up… incomplete… pathetic… ridiculous… clueless… washed out… not-so-funny… dry… brain-fucked……………….. I’m out of words!

So let’s take this one bite by bite… just like we normally eat a piece of good Jalaibee.

Don’t know why… but everybody seems to love these two boys!

Billu (Danish Taimoor) and Bugga (Ali Safina) – yes Bugga, the stupidest screen name in the history of cinema ever – are two pretty faced, humble orphan-turned-robbers who owe a debt to the local mafia led by Dara (Adnan Jaffer). On the night they stole for him; their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and erupts into flames thus burning the money along with it. While opening the fedora, Billu also catches fire, but despite the fire being big enough to cover more than half of his body, it wasn’t hot enough to give him life-threatening burns. Yea I get it… that was supposed to be like a Tom & Jerry moment, but I just sat there with my mouth wide open in shock over the failed attempt at comedy by the two morons!

The next morning Dara makes it to their house… Danish Taimoor is shirtless in this scene… yes ladies… DROOL all over his bare chest, Aaiza’s not watching! Anyway, the badass don that Dara is – or at least is desperately trying to be; he gives them some more time to repay The King’s money. Why Billu and Bugga had borrowed money in the first place, where they stole it from and why Dara is being such a generous mother-in-law to the two… well I guess if the writer doesn’t give a shit about these details then why should you, right?

By the way… these aren’t the only unanswered questions in the story… there are plenty more. Read on!

The King – a.k.a as Akbar (Sajid Hassan) is a corrupt businessman trying to become the Prime Minister of Pakistan – waah! His Jalaibeed royalty is known only to two people – the first being Dara, and the second being a guy named Ali (Waqar Ali Khan) who has come back from England along with his younger brother Jimmy (Uzair Jaswal), seeking revenge from The King for his own Jalaibeed reasons. And in order to get to The King, Ali is having an affair with The King’s daughter Eman (Sabeeka Imam). How they met… the writer doesn’t give a shit about it either. What’s important is that she is completely unaware of her lover’s intentions – awe bechaari. If only Pakistani girls just stopped being so bloody naive!

On the same morning, after giving an interview to ARY News, Eman heads off to Dolmen City where she tricks her guards and runs off to meet her boyfriend Ali. Through an emotional outpour of dysfunctional family memories, Ali gets to know that her father will visit her mother’s grave the next day where he will be all by himself and kidnap-able. I thought that the only place a person running for Prime Minister goes alone is the toilet… seems like The King is a rather brave one!

Simultaneously, in order to repay Dara – or re-rob to repay Dara, Billu and Bugga knock on several doors including a gay brothel to borrow money. They eventually plan to rob a known big shot in the gambling circuit and wind up at a nightclub where they meet Bunno (Zhalay Sarhadi); a prostitute who can assist them In committing the felony simply because the gambler has the hots for her! At this point, it is also revealed that Bunno and Bugga don’t quite get along together; why they don’t get along… humpf… I’m not even going to say it again!

Let me also add that Bunno too is in fact an educated girl who insists that even though she was not able to become a doctor, she knows all her biology… pretty well…

😮

Besharam kahin ki… yehi kaam karna tha to zaroorat hi kya thi parhne ki? Kalankini… naak katwaa di saare khandaan ki… ab tumhaari behno se kaunsa shareefzada shaadi kare ga?

Lol… this one never gets old!

Also, Ali and she are having an affair and once she gets her share of the loot, she’s plans on quiting her dirty business and settle down with him! Leh dus… harkatein Rita jaisi… aur armaan Sita jaisay…

Bitch… the only thing you’re getting is 70 lashes in hell!

The following morning in the ‘central qabristan’ – totally HS graveyard; The King throws a handful of blinding rose petals at the audience watching the abomination of a movie while Ali and Jimmy successfully kidnap him. But their car is stolen by Bugga who is conveniently in the same neighborhood looking for a vehicle for himself. Furthermore, Billu reacts to Bugga’s utter stupidity by shooting the guy in the trunk – they don’t know it’s The King. And with that, The King is reduced to a lowly pawn and his story comes to an end… or maybe the writer just spilled his coffee all over that part of the script!

At home, Eman grows suspicious of Ali. She calls him up and tells him that her father wants him to come over for tea and biscuits – rishtaa mangne ke liye, but Ali himself acknowledges how smartly she figured out he had kidnapped her father – dumbest acknowledgement ever! She tells Dara and Dara is really pissed off at her… like bitch… WHY YOU BEEN HIDING ALL THAT CANDY FROM ME TILL NOW?

Later in the night, Billu and Bugga pick up Bunno and arrive at the secret gambling den where after a failed seduction and intoxication, an overly exaggerated slow motion fight and a murder, the three run away with the money just before Dara arrives at the scene. How Dara figured out there was a party happening there… okay… I have officially lost count!

By that time; Ali, who should apparently be shitting in his pants because he misplaced a guy he had kidnapped earlier in the morning, is present at Bunno’s brothel almost as if he was waiting for her to come back so that she could tell him that she got a ride back home in his car and that she can help him find it because she had a mirage about Billu and Bugga’s whereabouts – what… I’m just trying to fill in the gaps the writer missed!. By the way, this is also the part where Bunno realizes that her boyfriend is actually a dickhead, but she still helps him find his car even though she should’ve told him to fuck off!

Dancing Car moment: never forget to celebrate after finding your missing car. Nevre forget to get a room too!

The next morning, Dara calls everybody at the same warehouse to dispose of all of them – Billu, Bugga and Ali – in one go. And in the most ridiculously executed gun battle, everyone, literally everyone – Dara, Ali, Jimmy, Bunno – The King is still dead in the trunk of the car, and more than a dozen other badies die – except for Billu and Bugga who take the money and run away. Oh the car apparently took off as well… where… how… iska jawaab to director saab ko khud bhi nahi pata hoga!

If Yasir Jaswal is an option, GO FOR HIM!

But wait… it doesn’t end just here. Are you kidding me? How long is this Jalaibee of a story coiled up anyway?

In a hotel room, Billu and Bugga get into an argument about how they should plan their retirement fund. Billu calls Bugga a lallu which pisses him off, but the lallu fails to shoot Billu because he is actually a lallu without balls! And when the lallu tries to walk away with his share of the money, Billu shoots him and then cries over his dead body without a single stain of blood appearing on his crisp white shirt! The doorbell rings and out of nowhere Eman disguised as housekeeping reappears and kills Billu. She burns the money and walks away only to leave behind the most incomplete hint at a sequel ever.

And by now I’m pretty sure that you’ve been raped… mentally!

Stupid dialogues… made stupider by yours truly.

Jailaibee is one shit bag of a movie that fails at so many levels that it’s not even funny… actually it is, but in a different way of course.

Yasir Jaswal’s screenplay is simply appalling. Too many subplots, with too many loopholes and unexplained logic and coincidences just take things too far from being considered as a cinematic liberty. Not to mention, his approach of showing two emotionally distinct scenes progress alongside one another is like going through torturous facial acupuncture that leaves you completely numb till they’re over.

Yet the flaws in his writing are still not big enough to hide some really amateurish mistakes that he makes as a director. The heavenly confetti of rose petals that seemed to come out of The King’s pocket when he was being kidnapped, the car magically disappearing in the warehouse sequence and above everything else… WHAT HAPPENED TO THE KING’S BODY? Really??? That brain dead behind the camera?

Once upon a King!

And the climax – goodness gracious me… even an old man could reach a better climax without having to use Viagra! Too long, too dry and too un-orgasmic!

None of the actors gave a praiseworthy performance. If Ali, Sajid and Adnan were overdoing their bits, Sabeeka, Danish Zhalay and most definitely the other two boys underperformed miserably. Blank expressions to poor dialogue delivery… it was almost as if they were reading their lines off placards placed behind the cameras while being completely unfamiliar with the term ‘acting.’

Ali Safina despite trying so desperately was nowhere near funny. Zhalay was anything but enchanting even in her item song Jawani. Sabeeka was like a zombie who just walked out of a salon that ripped her off. Sajid and Adnan were trying too hard to be badass villains but felt like two pregnant women throwing a useless tantrum. And let’s not even start on Waqar Ali Khan and Uzair Jaswal: failed attempts at acting and English accents just got redefined! Every time the two spoke, I wished I was deaf. Danish Taimoor… despite being a decent actor otherwise, this time around he was completely lackluster. Well I guess if you know that an actor is worthy of giving you a 6 on 10, yet the director is content with a 4 on 10 from him, then we all know that the actor is not the only one to be blamed.

If there was anything in the movie that still serves as a meager saving grace, then that is undoubtedly the camera work – the best I have ever seen in any Pakistani movie till date, and the catchy item song – which was terribly choreographed by the way.

The Real Jalebi Bai

So there you have it – not every Pakistani movie is a step in the right direction; this one is just abysmally pitiful.

To sum it up, unlike the fresh Jalaibees that you get at the corner of your street, this Jalaibee is completely distasteful.

1 / 5 stars