Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani – pals till the end…

Ayan Mukerji’s Wake up Sid was delightfully fresh. He brought to light a hitherto unsensational story. The success of the movie was the simplicity of the story beautifully told. Yeh Jawani hai deewani essentially has the same structure. A self-absorbed protagonist and a simple lead lady who jolts the hero to reality, through her simplicity. Yet, the story had to be told well. Yes, it was nicely told.

The sharp contrast of the two movies is the fact that YJHD is far more Bollywood than WUS. It has an item number bringing in Madhuri Dixit-Nene to add to the hype. It has some dance and song numbers, although delightful, could have been done away and the movie goes on for a good 3 hours which needn’t have been the case. But the movie is running to packed houses because the three hours is nicely done. There are several winners in the movie and we will find that out as we go along.

The star cast is nicely picked. Ranbir Kapoor always offers the guarantee of a good performance. Siddharth Roy Kapoor is a pleasant surprise. His performance in Aashiqui 2 has been talked about. This movie which came out with practically no gap is not a result of his A2 performance. This just proves that he is someone to watch out for in the future. Kalki Koechlin has stepped out of the cocoon of only-meaningful-movies created by the likes of Anurag Kashyap and Dibakar Bannerjee and is now increasingly seen in a lot of commercial movies. Her acting skills are upto the mark so she lives upto expectations. Yes, I did save the best comments for the last. The best performer of the movie is Deepika Padukone without a doubt. Some actors are backed and hence blessed. After being arm candy and heavily criticized, Deepika pulls off a stellar performance. If you see Love aaj kal and Cocktail and then YJHD you can pretty much see the evolution of Deepika Padukone, the actress. The one thing that has remained constant all through is her beauty. Her role can be called limited in certain cases and she plays the lovable geek to perfection. She looked comfortable even in the intense scenes and her chemistry with Ranbir Kapoor is so mind blowing that it is hard not to imagine that there is something there.

The story is not an unheard one. The dialogues have a lot of clichés. But it has a soul. The movie is carried out well supported very ably by the support cast of Siddharth Roy Kapoor and Kalki. The aspect I particularly enjoyed was the same fact that made Wake up Sid so beautiful. You can just relate to the movie. You know these characters. You understand their feelings. You know how your friends from school are. There is so much comfort that sometimes the understanding of expectations is just lost in the years gone by and it is only realized after a spell of separation. You can see your love not getting reciprocated in someone else’s eyes and then comes that difficult situation where you are stifled into just hiding those emotions away and they just seem to remain bottled for years. And then finally, the realization that it was probably love all through and it always comes out in the face of competition.
The scriptwriting and screenplay is very strong. The movie shows two parallel love stories. One that reaches a fulfillment and one that has a different end. In the end, both are justified and leaves the audience happy. Acceptance of the movie also shows the ideology of the new generation of movie goers. A decade ago the audience wouldn’t have accepted the true love of a womanizing dream chaser but today Ranbir Kapoor’s portrayal of Kabir is accepted. The movie cleverly leaves the leading woman’s relationship aspect out during the 8 years of hiatus.

Overall YJHD is very enjoyable. After a long time comes a movie which is a Karan Johar kind of a love story narrated in a completely different style. This is probably the way forward for movies to be made on love stories.