Critics Review:
Some stories become uncomfortable because of what they show, while others become uncomfortable because of the questions they force us to ask. Pooja Meri Jaan belongs to the latter category. What happens when a woman rejects a man, he refuses to accept that rejection, and his eventual suicide turns her into the accused? The premise immediately creates a complicated space between love, obsession, consent, guilt and social judgement.
Directed by Navjot Gulati and co-directed by Vipasha Arvind, the ZEE5 film brings together Mrunal Thakur, Huma Qureshi, Vikram Singh Chauhan, and Vijay Raaz in a courtroom drama that attempts to question the romanticisation of persistence and the tendency to hold women responsible for men’s emotional choices. The film has all the ingredients for a gripping social thriller. Unfortunately, the execution does not always match the ambition. There is a gap between the film’s timely subject and its uneven treatment. It is a film that will have a divided audience from the beginning itself.
When Rejection Becomes a Crime
At the heart of Pooja Meri Jaan is Pooja, a young woman whose refusal to reciprocate Aniket’s feelings sets off a chain of events she could never have anticipated. Following his death, a personal relationship becomes a public trial, with Pooja’s character, choices and behaviour being dissected by everyone around her.
What works here is that the film does not make the conflict entirely black and white from the beginning. Through flashbacks, Aniket’s obsession gradually becomes clearer, while Pooja herself is not presented as a perfectly behaved, universally likeable victim. That ambiguity gives the central conflict some much-needed texture. The film keeps the audience questioning the dynamics between the two until relatively late in the story, which is really interesting.
The problem is that the screenplay eventually becomes more interested in delivering its message than allowing the complexity of the situation to breathe.
A Courtroom Drama That Needed More Fire
The courtroom is naturally where Pooja Meri Jaan should come alive. With Huma Qureshi playing Sana, Pooja’s lawyer and friend, and Vijay Raaz as the opposing lawyer, the film has two performers capable of creating tremendous dramatic tension.
Yet, the legal battle rarely reaches the intensity the premise promises. The arguments often feel designed to explain the film’s central ideas rather than emerge organically from the case. Sana’s sudden transition from corporate lawyer to someone handling this criminal matter also makes the proceedings feel convenient rather than completely convincing.
This is perhaps the film’s biggest missed opportunity. The story did not need louder courtroom exchanges. It needed sharper ones.
Mrunal Thakur Holds the Film Together
Mrunal Thakur is undoubtedly the film’s strongest anchor. Pooja is angry, confused, vulnerable and occasionally difficult, and Thakur manages to hold all those contradictions without reducing her to a conventional victim. Her performance becomes particularly effective when Pooja is forced to deal with the consequences of everyone else’s assumptions about her. Multiple reviews have singled out Thakur’s performance as one of the film’s major strengths.
Vikram Singh Chauhan also deserves credit for taking on a difficult character. Aniket has to appear sincere enough for his version of love to initially seem believable, while gradually revealing the possessiveness underneath it. Huma Qureshi brings natural ease to Sana, although the writing gives her character less depth than her performance deserves. Vijay Raaz, meanwhile, adds weight to the opposing side of the legal battle.
A Relevant Story That Plays Too Safe
The biggest issue with Pooja Meri Jaan is not what it wants to say. It is how often it tells us instead of making us feel it.
The subject is undeniably relevant, and the film raises an important conversation around consent, rejection and the social tendency to scrutinise a woman’s behaviour when a man
cannot accept her decision. But the writing sometimes becomes heavy-handed, while the courtroom revelations and emotional turns do not always feel earned.
There is so much potential in the idea of making the audience question where love ends and entitlement begins. Pooja Meri Jaan gets close to that conversation but does not explore it with enough depth.
Final Verdict
It is a thought-provoking idea which has been unevenly executed. Pooja Meri Jaan is not without merit. It has a strong central question, committed performances and a subject that deserves to be discussed. But a powerful premise alone cannot carry a courtroom thriller. The writing needed greater complexity, the legal drama needed sharper escalation, and the characters needed more room to exist beyond the film’s message.
Mrunal Thakur makes the film worth watching, while Huma Qureshi, Vikram Singh Chauhan and Vijay Raaz add credibility to an otherwise uneven narrative. It is a film with something important to say, but what could have been a gripping examination of rejection, obsession and consent settles for being a fairly straightforward OTT thriller.
Overall Rating: 3/5
By: Anushka Singhal
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