Jaadugar Free Download

[Gene Cryder]

Popculture has moved on, but Jaadugar remains rooted at that awkward intersection of low-budget parody and slice-of-life dramedy. When spectators in a stadium begin to sing an emotional song after their team loses, it's hard to tell if the moment was designed to be funny or serious. It's also hard to tell if the production value and performances are poor or if they're just deliberately tacky to evoke the B-movie sassiness of a spoof. This also isn't Jaadugar's only glaring identity problem: Where does magic and love fit into a sports film? How does football fit into the love story of a magician? Did I miss the memo on some strange heart-hat-goal metaphor? How does the audience fit into a viewing experience that's too hollow for the big screen and too dated for the small screen?

Jaadugar stars OTT star Jitendra Kumar as Meenu, a young magician who somehow finds himself in the impossibly-convoluted situation of having to reach the final of an amateur football tournament to win the hand of the girl he loves. The makers might want us to believe that this random linking of genres is intentional. That the joke is precisely this: the weak connection between three disparate coming-of-age themes. But the joke is on us when the film enters its second and third hour. Meenu is an orphan who lives with his uncle (Jaaved Jaaferi), a football coach whose only dream is to win the local trophy that eluded his late brother. When Meenu falls for an ophthalmologist named Disha (which translates to "direction" of course, because his first girlfriend was Iccha, meaning "desire"; I suspect his next would have been Jeet), her father asks him to prove his worth by winning at the game he hates. The more we wonder why, the less sense it makes. If the intent is to make the whiny Meenu realize that magic is about more than cheap stage tricks, it doesn't come through. What does come through, though, is that the father is an absurd man. Not even the line "Dil jeetne wale ko jaadugar kehte hai" (Those who win hearts are called magicians) can justify the sheer incompatibility of the film's stakes.

By extension, Meenu never looks like he's really in love with Disha (Arushi Sharma); he looks like he is trying to outwit the Bollywood perception of romance. The love-at-first-sight song at a wedding he's performing magic at is an ode to old-school ballads, where the hero doesn't need more than one glance to become a "good-hearted stalker". But when he actually weaves a marriage proposal into an impromptu magic show for her at night, the film wants to be sweet and innovative. But it still ends up looking like a riff on other movie proposals. Similarly, at no point does it seem like the members of the ragtag football team care for the game; they exist purely as a send-up to the underdog sports template. Yet, the film tries to get serious about them winning the tournament; Meenu's resolutions are hastily cobbled into their journey.

Which is to say: Jaadugar's relationship with the Bollywood it loves is often lost in transition. Like that mischievous schoolboy who expresses his infatuation for a girl by making fun of her, this film is torn between teasing Hindi cinema and wanting to be (with) it. For the viewer, these mixed signals are annoying and immature. Is it a magic trick when a movie about so many things miraculously amounts to nothing?

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