Jee Karda Review: Tamannaah Gives Mildly Diverting Rom-Com Her All

A meandering, mildly diverting rom-com that falls appreciably short of capturing the complexities of love and longing, hook-ups and heartbreaks, firm bonds of friendship and shaky relationships, Jee Karda is a fitfully breezy fluff-fest.

The eight-episode Amazon Prime Video show is over-plotted yet flimsy. It offers only slim pickings in terms of novelty and flair. It merely skims the surface of the frequently vexed negotiations that couples are compelled to do with each other, their families, their circumstances and their destinies as they try to sort themselves out.

The series revolves around seven inseparable school friends who grapple with the vagaries of adulting as they near the age of 30. When it hits the sweet spot, it gathers momentum. When it doesn't, it feels terribly clunky, if not entirely wayward.

Jee Karda, created by director Arunima Sharma in collaboration with Hussain Dalal (who plays an key but sketchy on-screen role) and Abbas Dalal, moves back and forth between 2006, when the seven protagonists were classmates in a Mumbai school, and 2022, when they are at a stage of life when the fun and games of youth are no longer an option.

Two young people in love ever since they can remember are buffeted by emotional tumult as the day of their wedding approaches. A counsellor who helps her clients deal with personal crises is herself in dire need of counselling. She impulsively lurches from one fling to another. A budding fashion designer married for three years yearns for privacy in a two-BHK apartment that she shares with her in-laws.

The four boys who complete the gang of seven fare no better. One of them, openly gay, is saddled with a lover who baulks at the thought of publicly acknowledging the affair. Another, a popular rockstar who generally gets along with his pals like a house on fire, is too self-absorbed to notice that the spectre of loneliness is creeping up on him.

The third guy in the group, a self-effacing schoolteacher, is a man of modest means who finds it hard to snap out of the gnawing sense that he deserves better - from life and from his friends. The fourth is the man preparing for marriage with his childhood sweetheart.

The septet seeks happiness and fulfilment but often make a hash of the quest. That is the story of Jee Karda - the series has many a promising moment that is frittered away on pat, shallow inferences. It is about love, sex and a whole lot of drama, mostly of the flippant, contrived kind. It is about continuums, full stops and fresh beginnings. Nothing that it serves up catches one by surprise.

Stray parts of the series are frothy and fun-filled, but when Jee Karda strives for levels of profundity that are clearly beyond its ken, it only manages to draw attention to the pulpy vacuity at its heart.

The cast of the show is led by Tamannaah Bhatia. She plays a successful architect gearing up to marry her boyfriend of 12 years, a cafe owner awaiting a life-altering professional breakthrough.

The architect, Lavanya, hems and haws her way to her wedding day and beyond. Her boyfriend, Rishabh Rathore (Suhail Nayyar), does not help matters, doing everything in his power to sow seeds of doubt in her mind.

Rishabh decides to let his ultra-conservative Dubai-based parents have a say in the run-up to D-day. The friction that ensues between the two families - Lavanya's happy-go-lucky single mom (Simone Singh) is the exact opposite of Rishabh's priggish mother - threatens to derail the relationship.

The young couple's school pals, each one of them a distinct character type, finds themselves on equally disorienting rides as they confront their desires and disappointments, their doubts and misgivings.

Sheetal (Samvedna Suwalka), married to Sameer Kotadiya (Malhar Thakar), lives in a cramped apartment. The young couple sleep on the sofa and have no space for intimacy save in the bathroom and on the terrace.

If Sheetal's problem is that she does not get enough action, Preet Chuharmalani (Anya Singh) seems to have way too much of it, swinging from an obnoxiously cocky movie actor to a sedate doctor in her search for the right life partner.

For the gay Melroy Pitroda (Saayan Banerjee), a lover who is wary of coming out messes things up. And Shahid Ansari (Hussain Dalal), a schoolteacher who grew up poor, often feels that his mates have little time for him.

Neither of the aforementioned six have anything in common with Arjun Gill (Aashim Gulati), a flamboyant Punjabi pop singer - known as AG the OG - who has returned to Mumbai from Canada. His friendship with the rest of the group, especially Rishabh, who takes care of the crooner's mother (Dolly Ahluwalia) in his absence, has stood the test of time despite many ups and downs.

All the four boys have daunting daddy issues. Rishabh's domineering dad (Rajesh Khattar) hogs a fair bit of footage because much of the show is centred on the preparations for the big, not-so-fat Punjabi wedding that Jee Karda culminates in.

Melroy's stepdad, Shahid's alcoholic and abusive father and AG's absent pop all surface at different points of the narrative in person or by way of references. They are to blame, the script spells out, for how life has turned out for the three lads.

Jee Karda examines the repercussions of youthful excess and exuberance. It does so without coming up with anything that might be described as startlingly revelatory.

The actors do their bit to inject some pep into the proceedings, but the script, a welter of cliches, does not give them much to play with. Tamannaah Bhatia gives it her all, as do Aashim Gulati and Suhail Nayyar but Anya Singh and Samvedna Suwalka turn out to be the real scene-stealers. Hussain Dalal and Saayan Banerjee, too, give their roles their best shot.

"Marriage is a shit show", the female protagonist is warned at one point. Jee Karda isn't quite that bad, but it definitely could have done with more depth and acuity.