J Baby Review: Has Good Moments, But Overly Stretched!

Ashwin Ram

J.Baby is a family drama starring Dinesh, Maran and Urvashi in the titular role. The film is directed by Suresh Mari and produced by Pa.Ranjith under the Neelam Productions banner.

Premise:

Dinesh and Maran are brothers who are not on good talking terms. Urvashi is their mother who goes missing and reported to be found in Kolkata. The men come together to bring their mom back to Chennai, what they go through forms the crux of the story.

Writing/ Direction:

There are many nice moments in the film that are written well. The conflict between the brothers is simple but the drama is strongly constructed to make it believable. Urvashi’s character is strangely established much later in the movie, but those portions add value to her character. Maran’s one-liners are hilarious as they are situation based and the factor acts as the driving force for the film’s engagement at many places. The nativity is superbly maintained by retaining Bengali dialogues as it is for the portions situated at West Bengal without opting for dubbing. The plot is good enough with fine moments at frequent gaps, but still the final output misses out to make a mark. It's a film that could have been easily improvised at the edit table, it gives a serial feel as there are lags throughout. The situations are neat, unfortunately every sequence is dragged to a huge extent that we don't get to feel the essence of it. The direction is also old-school that doesn't fit the order of the day, it ends up as a fairly watchable flick only because of the content. Providing a solid impact is the intention, the familiar route of slowly and repetitively establishing things is chosen, but the issue is that the team has gone overboard to an extent it tests our patience at times, every element is spoon-fed to the audience. So even when things conclude, the impact is hardly present.

Performances:

Dinesh looks exactly like a middle-class family man, he has appreciably altered his physique to suit the film. Maran’s timing dialogues are quirky and works out to a large extent, not just that, he scores as a performer too, by emoting lively in the sentiment scenes. Urvashi is the central character of the movie, she has played her part perfectly, her behavior is partly innocent and partly annoying, suiting the thick of her role. The supporting roles whereas the family members are neatly portrayed with the right amount of importance. The artist who has played the army man role is involved in the true incident, but it feels overly exaggerated for the film language.

Technicalities:

There are quite a bit of montage songs in the movie and they feel very outdated to hear. The background score is the main spoilsport of the film with an old-school instrument and tuning style. Decent camera work, not the best of picture quality, still shooting in the live locations and showcasing them with great clarity added immense value to the storyworld. Messy editing, the runtime must have been bare minimum 30 minutes less, also the first half and second half narrative cut is also a bit of an issue as they looked like two completely different movies stitched as one.

Bottomline

A relatable true story that is made as a watchable drama with a mix of family emotions and comedy. Long-drawn-out narration and old-fashioned presentation are the major issues, stronger technical aspects and a much crisper duration would have definitely made it a worthy film.

Rating - 2. 75/ 5