Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani - Glossy, flat and not much Indian


One more KJO production, one more flat, predictable story line. All gloss, some frills and barely any depth. Bunny - hero - is selfish to the core, for the most part anway, but other than that, typically filmy super-smart. Drinks, dances, brawls galore -and ain wakt mein -  obtains a NorthWestern Univ scholarship with - nary a hint to nor a thought about - his 2 friends who he ostensibly spends all his time with.
8 years later, one of the friends decides to marry (arranged!, hallelujah) - after more drinks/dances/poorly-explained-bruised-friendship-set-right and general herogiri - Bunny domesticates and gets hitched, conveniently. A flat story with a suitably flat New Year scene ending.
Naina - apparently, the heroine - is an add-on, literally to the 3-friend-some and to the script. Where the script fails, the acting holds. Farooque Shaikh's well-enacted character gets a raw deal in the script in a one-sided relationship with his son. One more changing pattern from the typical Indian hero:hero-parent relationship of the past. But, then come to think of it - there wasn't much 'Indian' about the entire narrative. The characters could have belonged  to any upwardly mobile set of families from almost anywhere set in similar locales - and the script would have worked just as well (or badly).
Maybe, this is because - and a case - of art reflecting the society it is set in and what that society wants to see itself as. Probably, which is why it's raking it in, in the BO.

1 comment:

  1. Yet GRR, some how this movie clicks the appeal somewhere some how (too KJo style, isn't 'somewhere and some how'). Barring the filmy mood and sequences (which obviously takes up majority of the movie, without which would categorize YJHD as a documentary), the girl Naina reveals her apprehensions and the coming to terms of her emotions towards the boy who helps break her emotional barriers lead a non-geek life.
    Thank god the director decided to not make them run around trees in the middle of the movie, which would have left not many options but to introduce a new character (Pran or Chopda, Prem Chopra, or akin) to take the movie through the second half. The choice of showing the male protagonist as a chauvinist and self-centric was a good one in my opinion. At the end the need to connect with the Indian crowd would have gotten the director to close out by getting the two leads together. But then if Naina was enacted by any other lead (e.g. Sonam Kapoor, Piggy Chopps, Aayla (aka Alia) Bhatt or Anushka (funny lips) Sharma) and if (with many ifss) I was the male lead, I would have continued with the life RK lead. Who wouldn't want to fall in love with the wonderful Ms. Padukone.

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