A rural setting of Bihar, rustic people, a satirical take on their lives and amongst all of this, a love story blossoming. Sounds like a perfect setting for a perfect film. Jo Dooba So Paar - It's Love In Bihar has all the right ingredients. Whether it works or not remains to be seen.
Kishu (Anand Tiwari) is very notorious in the entire Bihar. He is kicked out of school. He assists his father on the truck only to realise the criminal nature of his work. He quietly watches it all indifferently and then one day falls in love.
Sapna (Sita Ragione Spada) is an american girl with an italian decent. She is in Bihar to research on Madhubani paintings. She wants to head into dangerous parts of Bihar in order to pursue her research and is in search of a guide until her search ends with Kishu coming to her rescue.
And even before Kishu's love for Sapna gets reciprocated, Sapna's boyfriend Mark (Alexx O'Niel) comes to India followed by an abduction of Sapna by a bunch of goons.
What follows is a series of madcap events owning to the chase for the love in Bihar.
Written and directed by debutant filmmaker Praveen Kumar, Jo Dooba So Paar boasts of a brilliant cast including the likes of Vinay Pathak, Rajat Kapoor, Anand Tiwari and Pitobash Tripathy. However, the director fails to tap their talent and ends up wasting away the only gem in his crown.
The story takes off pleasantly but within no time you realise it's a basic one line plot which has innumerable sub-plots sprinkled all over it with no relevance whatsoever. There are some characters too which are needless in the film. For example, Kishu's mother; who's only solution to curb her husband's anger is to go all lustful for him and end up in a raunchy make out session.
Even Vinay Pathak's depression where he spends almost each night getting drunk isn't justified. Moreover, the twist in the tale involving Rajat Kapoor too is badly scripted. Pitobash Tripathy is completely wasted.
One of the most important things to make a rural setting appear realistic is to have actors mouthing typical small town dialogues. However, dialogues by Joseph Mathai, Prabhat Kumar Jha and Ravikant Sharma not only lack the punch but are also uneven in accent.
Over all, Jo Dooba So Paar doesn't get the audience's attention too far. Half-baked and badly shot, the film is best avoided.