How long can you milk a concept for all its worth?
Once is great. Twice is good.Thrice is audacious. 5 Times would be pretty stupid is what anyone with a reasonable amount of common sense would say.
And Jail has proved it right.

Madhur Bhandarkar hit upon this motherlode of 'reality' movies with Chandni Bar in 2001. It was first of its kind in the franchise, and there were possibilities in a subject of that nature , and true to its content even recieved a National Award for the film. With Page 3 and Corporate he thought he had the Average movie fan eating out of his hands. Fair enough. The movies were big commercial successes, which made him audacious enough to go on with this now - predictable format of taking this cooking pan, throw in a handful of characters made famous or infamous through the media, known to the public, create a handful of others to support them, saute in over medium heat, add a dash of pithy dialogues and a song to taste, and voila, the latest Bhandarkar dish was ready for public consumption.

Madhur Bhandarkar is a brilliant craftsmen, but knowingly or unknowingly, he has gradually become a prisoner of his own ideas. maybe he should even get a patent for this version of 'reality - films and resell the franchise.
The reasons for the above are many. Chandni Bar worked at various levels. As a story, though the characters had elements of familiarity in real life, the narrative was natural, and honest. As his movies progressed on the same format, of half reelity and half reality, his narrative seems to be becoming more and more contrived and stilted.

Though the concept of a story centered around a jail has been surprisingly not had any takers in Bollywood ( ok, Teen Deewarein, what else?), this time Madhur Bhandarker has gone for the ready - mix variety for his cooking, and predicatbly, the end product looks colorful, sans soul.And as for Jail, all he had to do was look around through the world classics in this genre and pick the most popular of the characters and give it a Bollywood twist.

C'mon, Mr.Bhandarkar, whom are you trying to convince with this deep, intense buddy act interplay between Parag and Nawaab - is it for those who are not familiar with Andy and Red from The Shawshank Redemption? The character sketch is so blatantly similiar that it is disgusting. And Manish mehta as Joe D'souza who runs over 6 people (aha) on a drunken driving spree.
Cardboard cutouts anyone?

The characters as evident form the released story line are too boring to be true. Maybe Madhur never realised that the themes he progressively chose, unlike his first subject, that of dance bars, were so deeply ingrained in the popular media, that events have taken on a jaded sheen in everyday affairs.

How in God's name are you going to put uniqueness in a character that's been so familiar with the public, who knows the beginning, the middle ground and the end of ever character's screen life?
Break out of your shackles, Mr.Bhandarkar.
Maybe its way too symbolic to have this project named as Jail.
Its a bit ironic and sadly funny too.