Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Parineeti Chopra, Aparshakti Khurana, Sanjay Mishra and Javed Jaffrey

Director: Prashant Singh

Rating: *1/2

There is an age-old tradition called "Pakadwa Shaadi" (forced marriage) prevalent in some parts of U.P. and Bihar where grooms are kidnapped and forced into marriage to avoid dowry by the girls' families. And because films and television series these days with the backdrop of U.P. and Bihar are received well by the audience, director 'Prashant Singh' dabbled with this topic.

'Jabariya Jodi' is a story of Abhay Singh (Sidharth Malhotra) & Babli Yadav (Parineeti Chopra) from Patna. Before I shed more light on this movie, it is pertinent to mention here that this duo has been repeated because of huge commercial success of their earlier outing together in "Hasee Toh Phasee" (2014).

The film starts with teenager Abhay falling in love with vivacious Babli who happens to be his classmate and asking for her hand from her father, Duniya Lal (Sanjay Mishra). Abhay doesn't get what he desires and his teenage love story ends here. Shift to Scene 2: Babli grows up and falls for a guy and decides to elope with him. However, she is heartbroken when he doesn't turn up at the railway station. This results in a lovely lass venting her anger by publicly thrashing her boyfriend and the media labels her "Babli Bomb".


In the meantime, Abhay has grown up to be a local goon and is indulging in the practice of "Pakadwa Shaadi". This brazenness displayed by Abhay is the result of his father Humkum Dev Singh's (Javed Jaffrey) backing who happens to be of slip-shod morality.

While actively pursuing his social interests, he gets to pick a boy for Babli's best friend and forces the family to marry off their son. Their unexpected encounter at the wedding results in Abhay's love rekindling for his first love. These overtures are heartily reciprocated by Babli and the confusion is built with further sub-plots to bring home the menace of Pakadwa Shaadi.

The movie is longish and becomes drab at times. The attempt is made to drive home a social message by having humorous moments. This explains the casting of Aparshakti Khurana as Santosh who plays an important role in the film. The movie is laced with item numbers by Elli Avram and Alankita Sahai to titillate the Hindi heartland.


If we talk about the performances then Sidharth's character was very weak and the main reason was basically the wrong casting as he doesn't gel at all with the character. His chocolate boy looks in colorfully clothed avatars makes his character appear unreal. His job seems to be just slapping people around on screen most of the time. Parineeti Chopra as Babli Yadav with her red hair is so bizarrely dressed sometimes she looks out of place even among her friends. 'Babli Bomb' as she is referred to in the film could have done great as her character had potential but if the character is not well written an actor can only do as much as Parineeti did.


Like the main characters, the rest of the actors also didn't have much to do. So they were good in their parts.

The music of the film is very average and wouldn' t last long with you. There are songs which you might have heard before and now Tanishk Bagchi has recreated them for the film, like 'Zilla Hillela' and 'Khadke Glassy'.

Overall, the debutant director Prashant Singh has played havoc with the film and despite having mature actors couldn't take out the best from them.