The story in Jagga Jasoos (2017) is fairly simple, but the storytelling is complicated, with a framing story and interlocking flashbacks that show apparently mutually exclusive versions of a given event. The framing story takes place in a tent at a Kolkota book fair. A woman who we later learn is named Shruti (Katrina Kaif) and her troupe of child back-up dancers are promoting a series of comic books about a boy detective named Jagga. And when a child in the audience questions whether Jagga is real, Shruti abandons the sales pitch and instead provides us with backstory in order to show that Jagga is "as real as your dimple."
As an infant, Jagga was abandoned at a hospital. Since nobody bothered to claim him, he lived there for years, working as an unpaid orderly. The staff all loved him, but he was isolated due to a crippling stutter. Then one day young Jagga (now played by Saravajeet Tiwari) stumbles across an injured man (Saswata Chatterjee) lying in a field, and his life changes. Once he's sufficiently recovered, the man introduces himself as Tuttifutti and teaches him to sing rather than speak as a way around his stutter. The pair quickly grow close, and since nobody else wants Jagga, Tuttifutti takes him away and they start a new life.
At first, everything is wonderful, but a mysterious visitor changes everything. Tuttifutti places Jagga in a boarding school, and then disappears, though he still manages to send the boy a video every year on his birthday. Jagga is a bright and observant lad, so he busies himself by acting as a detective while slowly growing old enough to be played by Ranbir Kapoor.
Jagga actually solves a few cases before the plot really gets rolling. They're clever and well crafted (and they should be, because they're lifted from the American detective show Monk) but the most important detail is that they give Jagga the chance to meet Shruti, who is a spunky but unlucky reporter with a recently murdered fiance. (There's some definite romantic tension between the two, which is . . . potentially odd. Shruti is twenty five, but I am not sure how old Jagga is supposed to be; he's still living at the boarding school, but Ranbir Kapoor was in his thirties while the movie was being filmed. I'll just assume he is "of age" years old and try not to think about it.) Jagga saves Shruti from a murder charge, she burns down his room, and they part as friends, with Shruti promising to be there for Jagga whenever he needs her.
Before long, Jagga needs her. Tuttifutti's latest birthday video did not arrive. A man claiming to be from Indian intelligence (Saurabh Shukla) claims that he's dead, but Jagga recognizes the man as they mysterious visitor who ruined his happy home, and he's determined to find out what really happened to his adoptive father. The trail leads to Africa, and since Tuttifutti was also very unlucky, Jagga believes that Shruti's bad luck can lead him to his father's bad luck. Before long, the pair are in Africa, dancing in the streets, dodging the police, stealing a plane, stowing away on a circus train, and being menaced by cheetahs.
Jagga Jasoos is clearly drawing from literary boy detectives and adventurers like Encyclopedia Brown and Tintin, but what it really reminds me of is A Series of Unfortunate Events. That's not just because our young(ish) protagonists are placed in increasingly bizarre situations while trying to unravel a mystery involving their missing elders, a mysterious organization, and a gleeful but seemingly untouchable villain; like the Baudelaire orphans, Jagga and Shruti are shaped by loss and desperate to find some sort of normalcy in a deeply odd world.
I've never seen another movie quite like Jagga Jasoos. The storytelling is complicated, but it doesn't cheat; everything we see on screen really happens, and everything counts, especially the bits that contradict each other. And much of the story is told through music. While the average Bollywood movie has around eight songs, Jagga Jasoos has twenty nine. But while I like it a lot, the movie was an enormous flop. The promised sequel is never coming, and the cliffhanger ending is never going to be resolved. Still, I have faith in Jagga; one way or another, he'll find his way home to his family.
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