Review: Good Luck Jerry (2022)
Good Luck Jerry, the Hindi remake of the Nayanthara starrer Kolamaayu Kokila is a good ‘fun on the run’. Written by Pankaj Matter, and directed by Siddharth Sen the film has a pretty tight narrative, mixed up judiciously with laughs, twists, and turns.
Janhvi Kapoor plays Jaya or Jerry, a Bihari girl who lives in Punjab with her sister Cherry and their widowed mother. To make up for the lack of funds in the household, Jerry works in a massage parlour, which her mother doesn’t like.
One day, Jerry and Cherry inadvertently cross the path of a drug cartel. When Jerry finds that her mother has cancer, she thinks of making a move towards a much more questionable profession.
Her innocence and sweet face makes her an indispensable member of the drug gang. However, after a few deliveries, circumstances spiral out of hand and Jerry finds herself on the rear end, saving herself and her family from drug lords and the police. As Jerry puts one set of gangsters against the other, it leads to a series of smartly-conceived humorous and tragicomic situations, with a slow background score.
Director Sen, brings a unique quirk and visual palette to this movie.
Jerry’s predicament is desperate, but it never quite feels so because the three women aren’t really given the kind of space that their unique relationship could have used. Much of it is largely down to the insistence to make Janhvi the leading light of the show, and while the actress carries herself with aplomb, it undermines some threads of a kooky little premise that maybe, could have been explored better.
The secondary cast is also wonderful, led by veteran Mita Vashisht as Jerry’s dramatic mother, and the inimitable Deepak Dobriyal as the roadside Romeo whose only dream is to marry Jerry. Dobriyal’s antics, similar to those in Tanu Weds Manu, single-handedly light up the women’s perilous journey across Punjab in a cocaine-loaded truck.
Overall, the film does reach quite a predictable end. You can easily sense the threat and solution for Jerry, which leaves me to wonder why Sen did not bring out Kapoor’s cunning side, and experiment with her character.
You can watch Good Luck Jerry on Hotstar.
