Jee Karda Series Review: A complex yet flimsy take on evolving friendships and life

We love our buddy comedies, don't we? It has a fascinating mix of relatability and the allure of evolving relationships even while battling adulting. Right from films like Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, and Veere Di Wedding to shows like Friends, Big Bang Theory, and Four More Shots Please, onscreen representation of friendship has become aspirational, albeit sometimes overtly glossy. An interesting addition to this list is Prime Video’s Jee Karda which follows the friendship and progressing individual lives of seven childhood friends, whose close-knit bracket remains intact as they experience the diabolical shift into adulthood. But where Jee Karda delightfully differs from the aforementioned titles is how it tactfully interweaves stories of childhood memories, to talk about the thriving yet vulnerable lives that each of the individuals is now leading.

Cast: Tamannaah Bhatia, Aashim Gulati, Suhail Nayyar, Anya Singh, Hussain Dalal, Sayan Bannerjee, Samvedna Suwalka

Director: Arunima Sharma

Streamer: Prime Video

There are no surprises at the start and end of Jee Karda, which is interestingly bookended by a fortune-teller who has a prediction about the seven friends. The film unpacks the path of their fates, and how a once-predicted prophecy is lurking somewhere, ready to pounce. There is plenty of relationship drama and intrapersonal conflicts, but somewhere down the line, the film forgets to focus on friendship. There is an outburst of sorts at the group coming from one friend towards the end, and personal equations are changed with themes of love and unresolved equations, but that never turns into a strong argument as to the deterioration of the equation between the seven friends. Also, why are they even staying together without a prominent bonding between all of them? At one point, Lavanya (Tamannaah Bhatia), who is one among the seven and engaged to her friend Rishabh (Suhail Nayyar), while feeling claustrophobic about the idea of marriage, says, “Grand gestures that you do only look good from the outside, but it’s the small things that really matter to me.” To this, what comes not as a surprise is the guy asking if she is PMSing. We see an elaborate exploration of modern-day complexities of relationships through them, but this is limited to romantic explorations, and nothing else. Of course, pockets of affection come out from the seven friends, but with the foundation of the friendship settled in a void, we don’t really get to see all of them together after their childhood. 

As much as love in today’s times is a trending theme, so are the childhood stories and experiences that shape what an individual grows up to be. There is an elaborate episode of childhood abuse and its impact on adulthood while growing up to learn one’s orientation through Melroy (Sayan Banerjee). But it has a problematic depiction with respect to the portrayal of intimacy and abuse, both at the hands of the same partner and happening within a matter of minutes. Both scenes sharing a piece of romantic background music just makes things worse. The layers of this also deepen when Melroy’s complaint against abuse is disguised as roadside robbery, and the police confess to thrashing an innocent. With a privileged complainant in place, this circumstance becomes all the more questionable and ignorant.

Jee Karda’s distinction is to make each of its seven characters, and its periphery characters unique. It also scores high on representation. From the inclusivity of queerness to showing conflicts surrounding privacy, familial issues, and social stigmas, the residual of the series is the satisfaction of seeing factions and facets being taken into account. But that’s all about it as they never fruitate into something worthy. For example, when Lavanya’s outgoing mother Antara (Simone Singh) dances her heart out at her daughter’s wedding, it is frowned upon by Rishabh’s parents, much to the chagrin of Lavanya. But the same outwardness is lacking when Antara doesn’t want to “outsource” her daughter’s kanyadhan. The question is not who does the kanyadhan, but why, given the progressive society that the characters are placed in?

Jee Karda tries to understand its limits and viable options of what it can achieve through its themes. What makes it a worthy watch is how it comes up with a distinct path of struggle for each of the friends, while not bogging them down with excesses. It excels in understanding the privileged world it is set in and makes humble strides in showing the characters outside of it. But on the lop side, the arcs never fully recover from what they began, which needed more exploration to show the interpersonal relationship between the friends.