‘Jo & Jo’ movie review, Mildly funny, and struggles to leave an impact

One has to be either super confident about creating a plot out of nothingness or really lacking in ideas to write almost an entire movie around a love letter and the confusions that arise from it. Beyond the story of sibling rivalry, much of the happenings in Jo & Jo are built around this anonymous love letter, which is addressed just to Jo, leading to Jomon (Mathew Thomas) and his elder sister Jomol (Nikhila Vimal) suspecting each other of being its recipient.

But the letter is just the latest reason for their fight. Remaining inside home for much of the time during the lockdown, the two have been at each other’s throats over one matter or the other. Jomol constantly raises her voice over the unequal treatment that they get from their parents, with her being saddled with the household chores, and him getting everything done for him by the others. Debutant director Arun. D. Jose, who co-wrote the script with Raveesh Nath, treats much of her outbursts as just reasons for more jokes, except towards the end.

The entire movie gets a treatment similar to that of some light-hearted web series, but not all of the attempted jokes land effectively. For his escapades outside the house, which mainly involve fishing at a nearby stream, Jomon has his friends Manoj Sundaran (Naslen) and Eby (Melvin) for company, who both manage to inject some much-needed energy and humour into proceedings. But even as Jomon and his friends spend time outside, having fun and getting into trouble, Jomol spends much of her time inside… but not out of her own choice.

For a movie which had so many promising tangents, the script limits itself to the love letter and the attempts by Jo and his friends to find the man who supposedly wrote the anonymous letter to the sister. After a point, Jomon’s obsession over the letter does not make sense at all, especially for a youngster who has so much around him to be distracted by. The image of the younger brother who moral polices his sister also does not fit well with his behaviour till that point.

The attempts towards the climax at gaining some progressive brownie points appear half-hearted, more so because some movies with progressive messages are made fun of in one of the earlier dialogues! Jomol’s genuine anger at being ‘prepared’ for marriage from a young age could have had much more impact, if the script had not trivialised her concerns earlier.

Jo & Jo has a few laugh-out-loud moments, yet one processes them as standalone skits, because the movie as a whole fails to create any impact.

Jo & Jo is currently running in theatres