Jetlee, produced by Clap Entertainment's Chiranjeevi (Cherry) and Hemalatha Pedamallu, was released in theatres today. In this section, we are going to review the latest box office release.
Plot:
The story unfolds on a passenger flight carrying a fugitive billionaire named Prajapathi (Ajay). Onboard is a puzzled, talkative, noisy young man (Satya) who has forgotten his recent memory. He is lost and has no idea who he really is. His fellow passengers are confused, too. They keep mistaking him for a world-renowned visually-impaired doctor named Ved Vyas. As he tries to survive murder attempts and accidents, Vyas must figure out his past before it is too late. He is the unintentional key to exposing the powerful people behind the theft.
Performances:
Satya delivers an applause-worthy performance as the confused yet lethal lead. He captures the vulnerability of a man lost in a fake identity perfectly. His dialogue delivery is gradually evolving, film after film.
Ajay is understated in his negative role, inviting self-aware ridicule. Vennela Kishore, as a passenger who takes Ved Vyas' words at face value, is fun to watch. Rhea Singha is the only prominent female character and she is good as someone who navigates her security-related job and the advances of a "double agent". Harsha Chemudu, as a pilot, is wasted. Gundu Sudarshan plays a Dubai man who is hilarious in the scene where he records a video just before his 'death'. Kabir Duhan Singh is routine.
Technical aspects:
Kaala Bhairava’s background score is decent. It's never intrusive. However, the lack of song routines exacerbates the monotony. Suresh Sarangam uses the cramped aircraft space (it is a set) well. The visuals feel expansive despite the setting. Karthika Srinivas ensures the editing is snappy. Wing Chun Anji’s action choreography is not inventive. The production design by Narni Srinivas makes the mid-air setting feel not too unnatural.
Post-Mortem:
Ritesh Rana crafts a screenplay that never slows down. At 110 minutes, the film is pacy. And, for most part, the jokes keep coming in too fast. It almost becomes impossible to keep a track of the humour density in the first half.
The second hour turns somewhat messy, and the experience is made all the more turbulent by the absence of fun moments for the first 30 minutes following the interval. The use of too many English-language words alienates the rural audience and the impatient multiplex cine-goer. At one point, on the pretext of maintaining authenticity, the characters indulge in technical jargon (this script was originally meant to be a serious-minded aviation thriller).
A crippling demerit is that the identity chaos of Satya's character feels bloated. His character's confusion is the engine on which the film runs. So, the lengthening of the element did make sense. Yet, without a pause, the film keeps at it. This tests the audience's patience a bit despite Satya's extremely likeable performance. You have to use extra grey cells just to figure out which lines being spoken by the characters are really meant by them and which are not. Satya's character says he is a double agent, but does he really mean it? The question is eventually answered, but by then, the film has bombarded you with ten one-liners and two meta references that are too many to soak into. Some episodes didn't deserve a place in an intelligent parodic film like Jetlee. The "bomb threat" episode is one of them.
In an industry where satire is almost a dead storytelling genre, it's good that Ritesh Rana uses it to expose the reality of dishonest journalism, for example. Getup Srinu plays a news presenter working for a TV channel run by a complete fraud. In a comical bulletin, he asks the readers why would his boss flee to Dubai where the cost of living is too high.
Closing Remarks:
Jetlee is a pacy satire that succeeds largely due to Satya’s brilliant comedic timing and Ritesh Rana’s sharp wit. While the film’s "identity chaos" plot gets a bit overstretched in the second half and the technical jargon might distance some viewers, it has its moments.
