Jolly LLB 2: A jolly good film

Cast:  Akshay Kumar, Annu Kapoor, Huma Qureshi, Saurabh Shukla

Rated: 8/10

Jolly LLB 2 is a crackling, near perfect, all-in-place rarity. Call it the star power of Akshay Kumar or the syrup of an eventful script, this one is strides ahead in presentation and engagement from Arshad Warsi’s Jolly…

As the Kanpuriya working out of the file-burdened bustling courts of Lucknow, Akshay as Jaggannath Mishra and his janeoo are a slice of small town life, both outside and in the courtroom of small-town India.

Akshay shows yet again how powerful he is on the screen even when his muscles are not rippling and his fists are not making too much of an intrusion in his personality. As the wannabe, unscrupulous lawyer whose marital high lies in plying his middle-class wife with whisky secretly and cooking a meal for her as she chomps away as the man of the house, Akshay’s personality has been built with a lot of consideration and is, thus, riveting.

But the beauty of this film lies not in just its lead character but also the atmosphere director Subhash Kapoor has infused into the film, the well-fleshed out side characters, the tumult around the courts, the fun element that exists even in the odds of life, the pathos of victimisation, the unrelenting corruption, the abuse of power by the police and the emotionality in every small or big relationship that is at play in this courtroom drama.

As asides go, one can’t think of this film without the sterling performance of Saurabh Shukla who plays the absolutely harried judge. He makes you laugh, he makes you think and he gives you those much needed breaks from monopoly of the lead character. Shukla was good in the first one too but it is here that he emerges as one of the main pillars of the structure.

Then there is Annu Kapoor as the criminal lawyer who encapsulates everything that is wrong with our judicial system. As Mathur, he is the epitome of that breed of service providers who are known to even scrape out the flesh from over your bones and yet not feel cannibalistic.

Huma Qureshi as Akshay’s wife is the only character that is wishy-washy in Jolly LLB 2 but she still manages to hold her own as a sideshow which is actually meant to and does highlight the innate goodness of Mishraji which also comes out through the cut-in-script encounters he has with his aged father played by VM Badola.

On the whole, Jolly LLB 2 is the sole reason why you should head to the cinemas this week.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 12 February, 2017