Film: Yaariyan
Starring: Himansh Kohli, Serah Singh, Rakul Preet Singh
Director: Divya Khosla Kumar
Producer: Bhushan Kumar
Banner: T-Series
Music: Mithoon, Pritam, Honey Singh, Anupam Amod
"Yaariyan" enters into the young....no,
make that very young...territory. Lamentably in the perverse parameters
of a particular kind of Bollywood entertainment, "young" is equated with
...no, not reckless....but brainless to the point of being moronic.
So the first 10 minutes of playing-time
in this over-long ode to the yen of being young is devoted the film's
hero Lakshya (TV actor Himansh Kohli) trying to get a kiss out of a
short-skirted miss. But the kiss ends up in a mess.
There are any number of under-dressed under-graduates luring and pulling boys into empty classes for a bit of necking.
And then Bollywood wonders why it is
blamed for violence against women in our society. Eve-teasing is not
just a past-time in a film such as this. It is a religion.
The debutant director sets her sights on
making a film that pays a jam-packed homage to the coming-of-age flicks
like Mansoor Khan's "Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar" and Karan Johar's "Student
Of The Year". The film also bears an uncanny physical resemblance to
Farah Khan's "Main Hoon Na".
As in Mansoor's film, Ms Khosla's
go-slow narration builds a graph for the hero from daft to wise....At
least that is what it's meant to be. But given the preposterous
preenings of the blabber-mouthed plot, the daft never develops beyond
the first draft. The screenplay could have done with substantial paring
and reparation.
There is a too much of window-dressing
and too little substance . The narrative moves through two continents,
and the Australian sojourn is crammed with loud propaganda on racial
hatred when the hero's Australian cousin is smashed to death by a
jealous local.
Many exhausting reels later the slain
NRI's mother (Deepti Naval, again!) is shown bandaging her son's Aussie
killer's hand. Bloody hell.
The plot is tiresomely old-fashioned.
The narrative is cluttered with characters who think 1970s but wear
clothes and an attitude borrowed from the immigration desk of an
American airport. Though much hue and cry is expended on the Indian flag
and its sanctity, scant respect is paid to the audiences' intelligence.
The debutante director assumes her
audience-profile to be 18-20-year-olds who spend all their time dreaming
of smooches and splashing in azure beaches. Laughably, none of the
film's young protagonists thinks beyond a kiss. Sex, if you must know,
is not for the young in a cinema that focuses on busts, bums and thighs
and on a pair of coconuts when the camera tires of the real thing. There
is unlimited attempt to sexy. But little sex in the film.
While it lasts, the narrative has
bicycle and motorcycle races, mountain climbing (impressively shot) and
social climbing, plunging morales and necklines. By the time the hero
finally grows up, the audiences, even the targeted youngsters, would
probably age by at least a few years.
On the plus side, the soundtrack is an
interesting mix of club beats and melodies. The title song and a rock
track in praise of the Mother do bring much-needed respite in a film
that tries so hard to be young that we end up looking at the aging
romancers in this week's other release "Dedh Ishqiya" with boosted
admiration.
This one is strictly for the young at heart and disabled of mind.