Movie Review Yaariyan

Movie Review Yaariyan

Cast: Himansh Kohli, Rakul Preet Singh, Dev Sharma, Nicole Faria, Shreyas Pardiwalla, Serah Singh, Evelyn Sharma, Gulshan Grover, Deepti Naval

Direction: Divya Khosla Kumar

Genre: Romance

Duration: 2 hours 25 minutes

Story: Hormonal groans and first-kiss misses. Pyjama parties and lessons in puberty. Big dreams, desires and ambition - all the stuff that youth is made of - packed in a college drama.

Review: 'Grease' was the word. Helping hormone-rushed youngsters slide into puberty and outta tight-fitting pants. 'Yaariyan' could have been the word. About friends, first-kisses and hot flushes. Peppered with candy-crushes and teenage desires furthest from reality. So we have Bettys and Veronicas crushing on extra-smiley Archies, all the while shaking their 'toohs' and 'tees' (beep, beep!) at beach parties. Of course, with thoda ambition, kuch-kuch competition, and mostly out-of-classroom lessons.

Presenting the leads of 'Gen-Y'. Lakshya (Himansh) the college casanova who spends all his time trying to get his first kiss with some sexy miss. Neil (Dev), the biker boy (minus hot babes), Pardi (Shreyas), the Jughead in the batch, but not hotdog enough for the gals. The plain-Jane, all-brain, Saloni (Rakul) who knows more about gigabytes than love-bytes. And the oomphy Jiya (Nicole), prowling all over this campus 'rompus' whipping every boy's fantasy. Their chilled-out lives go into top gear when the principal (Grover) chooses them as the 'Dream Team' to compete with the Aussie students (at sports & music), to save the pride and honour of their college. Suddenly their life is faced with new challenges, newer angles and love-triangles. To add more chapters, there are dramatic maas, horny teachers and their 'busty' subjects.

Divya's debut film 'Yaariyan', a comparatively small-budget film coming from a big banner, is mounted on a large canvas with impressive production value. The star-cast is all-new and enthusiastic; and most of all the music boasts of chartbusting numbers. Himansh's attempt is sincere, but Mr. Emoticon needs to flash his big-toothy smiley a little less. Rakul is very likeable and promising, Dev is subtle, Shreyas is good but often OTT, and Nicole fits the 'brief' (pun intended!).

Now the lows. The story has twists and turns, but no surprises. It packs in too much variety of thought bubbles (parties, patriotism, racial discrimination) in this boarding school drama. There are emotions, but the scenes or characters don't go deeper than the gloss, flipping quicker than their touch screen smart phones. The runtime is a tad long and songs (well-shot) one too many.

'Yaariyan' is nothing to gush about, but the teenies can watch this one for a lark...and some yo-yo beats!