Yet, I can't help but imagine that films like Jaan-E-Mann tried to walk so that those like Jagga Jasoos could run. Om Shanti Om, which released a year later, merely made this inventive treatment a little less uneven and a little more accessible. Secondly, Khan often oversells the caricature by appearing more like a participant in a school play than an adult in a quasi-musical: His bizarre accent and emotional scenes blur the line between self-lampooning and a lack of self-awareness. The Kal Ho Naa Ho spoofs from Mumbai (they pray for a farishta and geeky Agastya appears in slow-motion) turn into full-blown imitations: Brooklyn Bridge pining, the ear-piece tutoring, Zinta's expressions, hero sprinting, even the engagement song. The balance between skit and theatre gets skewed. Firstly, the film inexplicably abandons its Broadway tone once it reaches New York – Khan still plays the fool (his Elvis getup is jarringly good), but Jaan-E-Mann here becomes the movie it sets out to satirize. The magic realism of Jaan-E-Mann might have appeared too radical to unprepared audiences because of two reasons. The first forty minutes of Jaan-E-Mann in Mumbai fortify this style as a playful homage to old-school filming technique: Suhaan's dream amateurishly plants him into the footage of a 1960s Filmfare Awards ceremony, Suhaan's flashback is illustrated by a projector literally casting his memories onto the walls of his room, a character in it is told to step aside because he is "blocking the frame," shots are designed to make us notice that characters are 'driving' static cars against a green screen. This 'musical' model was traditionally limited to song picturizations – take Sachi Yeh Kahaani Hai from Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa, where the entire life-story of a gangster is recreated on stage with props and cartoonish costumes. Kunder punctures the suspension of disbelief with this disorienting style. The irreverent form it adopts is an extension of a 1990s WWF setup: You can see the strings holding up the puppets, you know it's make-believe, yet you thrive precisely on that audacity of choreographed fakeness.įor instance, the film opens with Agastya in a space shuttle with a Russian astronaut: Everything – from the cockpit to the controls to the accents to outer space itself – is designed to evoke a sense of colourful staging. Jaan-E-Mann, title included (Jaan v/s Mann), parodies the popular genre by crafting a Broadway-weds-circus universe that deliberately reminds the viewers of the over-the-top movie-ness of such premises. Kunder's "unoriginal" narrative was not an addition but a reaction to the mainstream ouvre of triangular love. Akshay Kumar's nerd-laugh alone is a perfect advertisement of the film's intent.
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