If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.

There are a lot of Indian comedies that revolve around social issues (many of them starring Ayushmann Khurana - it's sort of his thing) but Jayeshbhai Jordaar (2022) is a comedy that really revolves around social issues.

Jayesh (Ranveer Singh) is the son of Pruthvish (Boman Irani), the head of their rural village.  Jayesh is outwardly meek, and will publicly back his father even when he does something utterly ridiculous like respond to complaints of sexual harassment at the village's school by banning soap for girls so that their fragrance cannot lead men astray.  Privately, Jayesh is utterly devoted to his wife Mudra (Shalini Pandey) and their daughter Siddhi (Jia vaidya).  They have a very traditional rural Indian marriage, but Jayesh secretly longs for a  kiss from his wife.

Pruthvish, on the other hand, longs for a male heir, and he's anything but secretive about it.  Mudra is pregnant again, and Pruthvish is very clear: if the ultrasound shows that it's a boy, the whole village will celebrate, but if it's a girl the pregnancy will be quietly terminated, just like the ones before.  The whole family is praying fervently for a male heir, but thanks to a quiet word from a discrete doctor Jayesh already knows that it's a girl, and he's been making plans.

They're not necessarily good plans; Jayesh has fixated on the idea of running away to the village of Ladopur, a village where the gender balance has completely toppled, leaving a population of friendly but lonely wrestlers who vow to protect all women.  When Jayesh's parents announce that they've found a new doctor to give Mudra an ultrasound, it's time to go, but they only way they can think of to get out of the house is faking an abduction, with Mudra holding her husband hostage with a pair of scissors.

And from there - well, they run.  Pruthvish chases them, helped by pretty much all of the men in the village. For a while, the movie pretends to be a road trip comedy, so they meet people, get separated, nearly get captured, are betrayed, are rescued.  It's increasingly clear that Jayesh is going to have to step up (Siddhi tells him as much) but he spends much of the road trip trying to figure out what form that can take.

And that leads to the central paradox of Jayeshbhai Jordaar; it's very serious social commentary dressed up as a roadtrip comedy, with a family of goofy eccentrics having adventures while running from a crushing and downright dystopian existence.  At its best, the movie reminds me of Terry Pratchett: often funny, always heartfelt, and incandescently angry.

The movie is not always at its best.  The escape-captured-escape cycle repeats a few too many times, the dialogue is a bit shaky at times, and while it's a movie about societal oppression of women, it's a very male-centered narrative. The focus is on Jayesh's emotional journey, though though that does help underline some of the ways in which men are also hurt by institutional sexism.  

In the end, Jayeshbhai Jordaar is like Jayesh himself; it's heart is in the right place, but it stumbles a bit along the way.