It’s the state where people sing songs with words like ‘ghamandva’ and announcers casually ask passengers to relax, the train will be late by 22 hours. Welcome to Bihar.
Director Siddharth Sen wastes no time in hammering it in that this is a comedy. So laugh when Anilji (Neeraj Sood) who lives upstairs eyes Sarbatiji (Mita Vashisht), the mother of grownup girls Jerry (Janhvi Kapoor) and Cherry (Samta Sudiksha). Laugh a little more when a stranger turns up in wedding attire and swears he’ll marry only Jerry. Next door neighbour Rinku (Deepak Dobriyal) announces he’s got neighbourly rights over her, Jerry is his and no one else’s. Twin boys from Nepal are a part of this mohalla and when Cherry asks them if their mother can tell the difference between them, they say, “She can because she’s educated and not from Bihar.” One of the twins comes visiting Cherry to coo together.
So there are suitors for all three women of the house who fight most of the time but also bond over the mom’s coughing which the girls imitate and soon it turns to laughter.
Sarbati wants Jerry to give up her job as a masseur. She makes momos for a living with Janhvi kneading the dough with her feet. Like Sridevi made wine by stomping on grapes in Lamhe.
Director Sen’s remake of the Tamil film Kolamavu Kokila plays a silly background song broken by a short scene or two to establish the happy family with Rinku, Jerry, Cherry and twin, mom and upstairswala uncle too.
It turns serious when mom Sarbati coughs blood and the doctor casually tells Jerry that the treatment will cost Rs 25 to 30 lakh.
That’s where the gangsters come in and Jerry offers her services as a mule to Timmy the gangster (Jaswant Singh Dalal) – she’ll ferry substance to and fro in her tiffin dabba and nobody will be the wiser for it. She looks so innocent.
The same ploy of a song interspersed with a short scene plays in the background when Jerry’s on her new job, slowly gaining confidence in the job. There are songs thus used at every stage with the background score unsubtle enough to tell you this is funny, enjoy, someone’s getting shot, it’s black comedy, clap.
I’m not sure what comedy Sen expected from the Deepak Dobriyal track but there’s so much of it that there’s a whole scene of Rinku wooing Jerry wearing an ‘I Miss Punjab’ tee which makes you climb a tree.
Mom’s treatment starts in full swing and gangster Timmy is smitten by Jerry but Jerry smells envy and an informer in the air after a cop nearly catches her and the dabba.
You have to roll in the aisles when Timmy shoots down the informer, Jerry urging him to gun down another too. A jaunty background score reminds you that this is black comedy, so when people die comically, relax, smile.
Gangsters and cops speak in Punjabi while Jerry remembers to say ‘kosis’ and ‘ricksa’ when the director reminds her that they’re supposed to be in Bihar.
The humour is high on the lowest rung possible. A gangster called Mallik (Saurabh Sachdeva) talks while sitting on a commode, farting and other noises that come with the job adding to the ‘comic air’. Another gangster’s dialogue goes, ‘Police hamari tatti bhi soon leti hai’, a line Jerry repeats the next day when she meets him. The stinking thought continues as Jerry has to retrieve cocaine packs from a gents’ filthy toilet in a public mall.
A smalltime criminal says, “Jerry’s mother moonh mein bhejti hai.” He means, she sells momos. I hope you’re having a rollicking time, so far. I didn’t.
Mallik the gangster on the pot is crazy and yucky as he dumps the noodles from Jerry’s dabba where the packet is concealed on his table each time and makes a mess. And he recites, ‘Machli jal ki rani hai’ before dumping Jerry’s phone into the fish tank.
After a scare with the police, Jerry wants to exit. But Timmy the gangster wants a massage from her. She leaves him injured. The gangsters are up in arms. Jerry’s mom, sis and Anilji who calls himself family, get involved in a big consignment to save their lives. With the confidence of a veteran, Jerry briefs her family that there’s no difference between delivering momos and cocaine. It’s all about the confidence you exude on your face. A few more drug dealers called Daler (Sushant Singh) join the fray. Rinku gets more and more footage as Jerry’s lover who jumps in and joins the family when they’re out delivering the big consignment.
There’s an entire scene of Rinku’s van colliding with the gangsters’ vehicle just when Jerry and family set out to make the deal. It ends with Rinku insisting on joining them. The painful track of Rinku is thus lengthened where his fantasies about Jerry continue, bashful about their “affair”, and cocky before the cops, all of which is supposed to be funny.
With half a dozen gangsters on the loose, Jerry and her family with annoying Rinku in tow and Anilji at the wheel, take everyone for a ride.
It’s a messy potpourri where a slew of gangsters arrive. At one time there’s a baddie confronting the family with the backdrop of pigs grunting in the sty. Fun, isn’t it?
Gangsters end up killing gangsters to some more jaunty music and after mindless hungama and chaos that tries hard to but cannot replicate the hilarity of a vintage Priyadarshan comedy, Jerry plays her smartest move. Guess where the drugs really are?
The answer gets her a pass from the police for the family to walk free.
But it’s not over. Deepak Dobriyal gets to sing and dance to an entire number in the end credits.
Comedy has never been an easy genre to attempt. When the sur doesn’t strike a funny note, it’s like headless chickens running amok. With the accent on ‘poop’ and ‘crap’ and Dobriyal getting max footage as the lover Janhvi doesn’t even look at, the comedy simply sinks. It’s Goodbye Jerry. And thank God, you’re on OTT.
Watch Good Luck Jerry Trailer:
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