Jodi Breakers Movie Review by Mayank Shekhar

Director: Ashwini Chaudhary
Actors: R Madhavan, Bipasha Basu
Rating: *

A wife who’s a “vasna ki pujaran” (worshipper of lust; horny, in other words) tires out her boxing champ husband every night in bed. This seems to be affecting his sporting
related stories career. Low on energy, the boxer gets knocked out each time he hits the ring. This is why he wants a divorce. One Baba Kamdev is brought in to calm the woman down.

Baba Kamdev’s the god-man of sex. As against a certain yogi with a similar name, who, I suppose, practices abstinence. At his first session with his devotees, the fake baba’s written speech gets mixed up with a bar menu. Quite obviously he doesn’t know what to preach anymore, goes: “An Old Monk once said you must keep the Black Dog within you under control, or you’ll get a Black Label on your forehead…”

This, by the way, is the highest point of this film’s humour. The lowest one concerns a conversation about the top half of the heart that resembles a bum. “Only potty comes out of there,” says the hero. His buddy’s diarrheic, we hear gassy, farty sounds for background score. Sorry. That was just to let you know. Because there’s more to come. So you take it, on the rocks, or bang your head against one.

A movie can either make sense or money. So some filmmakers strongly suspect. Why did we expect anything better here? We always do.

The film’s National Award winning director made his Hindi debut with Dhoop (2003), a touching story of a Kargil war veteran’s family that goes through bureaucratic hell trying to claim promised compensation from the government. The picture remains politically relevant even now. The same director made something called Good Boy, Bad Boy later! This is his fourth.

Leading man Madhavan starred in a satisfying, sleeper rom-com hit Tanu Weds Manu just last year. Here, he’s the podgy, hammy hero with an odd accent and strange goatee that distract you from both his visible discomforts and double chin. In a divorce settlement, he lost his gaadi, back balance, bangla. But now he’s a kunwara (a bachelor), hence surrounded by white women in bras and beachwear.

Omi Vaidya plays his sidekick. He first made his presence felt as a Ugandan born IIT exchange student in 3 Idiots. He’s done quite a few Bollywood films by now (Dil Toh Bachcha Hai Ji etc). None have tried to explain his weird twang since. No one I know locally speaks Hindi like that; the script could easily justify it. Okay, I take it back; did I just mention script here?

Bipasha: the screen flashes in bold letters. A dance track, on the lines of Sheela Ki Jawani, starring Bipasha Basu of course starts, “Jadu hai tu Bipasha… Ooh aah sha Bipasha!” You know the routine. Madhavan is the DJ. A Jat gent is the bartender. You want to know what these guys are smoking. We’re at the opening night of a club in Greece!

The said hero, heroine run a break-up agency that specialises in helping philandering married people get a divorce. They split up a couple that never wanted to. They spend the rest of the film trying to get them back together.

In walks the mistress to the party, “Mein tumhare bachche ki maa banne wali hoon!” Sure, you’ve heard that one before. But wait. A doctor enters then, producing the husband’s blood test, “But he is HIV positive.” “Oh, I never slept with him the,” the mistress says. This is the climax. Don’t worry. Relax. This too shall passé!

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