10 Years Of “Janji Joni” : a Retrospective

in 2005, a well known moviemaker Joko Anwar set a groundbreaking in Indonesian movie industry through his movie debut Janji Joni. Even this movie has not peaked box office in local, Janji Joni gains positive feedback from criticus and movie enthusiast which undoubtedly stated that Joko Anwar is a genius moviemaker.

Janji Joni itsef is a simple story about film roll courier, Joni (Nicholas Saputra) who has ordinary daily life and one day he meets with mysterious woman named Angelique (Mariana Renata) and she requested Joni to do his job on time so they can become acquainted closer with each other.

In my perspective, Janji Joni is a few of Indonesian movie that has cool “explaining” part. In Janji Joni, audience will explained by narrator (Nicholas Saputra himself) further about who is Joni, what is he do, what the circumstances in his job and anything that make people who not know really about cinema and movie industry become familiar and eventually could enjoy the movie. That is the basic factors that often forgotten by other directors that tend to treated explanation part just for gimmicks and not really relate with other scene in their movie.

Then in Janji Joni everything is served just the way it is, Janji Joni vividly shows the doubts of movie critics, and Joko Anwar as director apparently not hesitate to show kissing scenes in this movie in proportional way that not downgraded the content to become B rated movie.

As the urban comedy movie, Janji Joni set new standard, coupled with philosophically funny quotes also with numerous stars that become cameo (Wulan Guritno, Ananda Mikola, Surya Saputra, Tora Sudiro, Indra Birowo, Rachel Maryam, even legendary actor Barry Prima, etc) this movie are still irreplaceable with other movie in this genre.

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