Review of Jeans (Original Language Version)

Introduction

Twin boys Visu and Ramu (Prashanth) study medicine in America and help their father Nachiappan (Nasser), also a twin, run a restaurant. They`re successful and enjoy the trappings of a modern western life. Their father insists on dressing them the same way in order to keep them together and in harmony with one another.

By chance while delivering a food order to the airport, the boys bump into Madhumitha (Aishwarya Rai) with her ill grandmother Krishnaveni and brother Madhesh. Confusion ensues between them as they flit from twin to twin and eventually find out the truth. Madhumitha falls in love with Visu and the pair want to marry. Unfortunately Visu`s father isn`t having any of it and insists that his sons will only marry twin girls. His bad experience backstory is told to us and we see how he arrived in America and what he left behind in India. His wife passed away while giving birth to his twin boys and his twin brother feels guilty for not helping in her hour of need. He`s got his own problems being under the thumb with a difficult wife. The men separate and this tale of heartache is relayed to the boys, this is why he insists they marry twins otherwise he believes there will be discord in the family.

But didn`t you know? Madhumita is also a twin! And hence the lying starts as the grandmother spins lie after lie in a vain attempt to get the pair married. Of course, Madhumita isn`t a twin and has to pretend all the while to both Visu and Ramu. Ramu of course falls in love with Madhumita as her twin self. Needless to say that I`m sure you can guess the outcome, it`s quite predictable.

Video

The aspect ratio here seems to be cropped from a very wide format. It`s presented as 2.20:1 but you can see actors just on the edge of the frame in some shots. This is either sloppy frame composition or the format was wider. I`m not sure why an incorrect ratio is present. The quality of the transfer varies with some shots looking clean and well lit, others looking more grainy with dirt and artefacting.

The shots that look the worst are the effects shots where the twinning of one actor to play two roles are. The effect here is more akin to Jean-Claude Van Damme`s Double Impact than say the sophisticated David Cronenberg film, Dead Ringers. Jeans uses a locked off camera, where you can still see the matte lines and mismatched lighting where filming was against blue screen. It became a running contest to `spot the fx shot` in my household!

Audio

There`s a choice of two audio soundtracks, DD5.1 and DD2.0. The 5.1 track sounds good and the music in particular has a lot of presence encapsulating you with sound. There`s very little hiss and no distortion. This has a good solid soundtrack.

Features

Fullscreen animated menus which are nice to begin with, then become annoying since it animates so slowly and you can`t skip ahead of it. Very tiring after hanging around for more than a minute waiting for the various copyright screens to disappear. The only extras are two trailers for Indian films, some dodgy English subtitles and a song selector where you can pick a song from the index and watch it from the film. The subtitles could do with proof reading and better timing since quite a lot would disappear before I had the chance to read them and see what was happening on screen.

Conclusion

This is what I expected of a typical Indian film, I detest the term `Bollywood`. Jeans has lots of singing and dancing that made me laugh just out of sheer exasperation. Every 80s cliche known to man is here. Plus the Ayngaran studio logo appearing onscreen in the corners every so often is irritating to no end. This film is too long, has average subtitling, a tired storyline and laughable effects. The over-the-top performances are just that. Surprisingly there are quite a few outdoor locations, notably in the US which means there was a budget for the film. This was clearly not spent on developing a proper story and script though.

I did like some of the music however, and even though I don`t understand Tamil, just the melodies on their own was pleasing. I can still hum a few tunes from the film, and it`s not often I sing film songs. I don`t mind the singing and dancing, and I have to confess that I am a fan of pre-80s Indian film, especially classics with Raj Kapoor and clan, Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra and the Kumar`s (not at no 42 I hasten to add).

Jeans is an average run-of-the-mill film that I wouldn`t bother spending anymore time with. There are plenty more decent Indian titles out there worth spending time with.