Coming-of-age films usually plant a new seed of hope in our hearts, and while Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (This Crazy Youthful Feeling) will strike come chords with young adults, it doesn't quite wrap up all that it started.
Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (This Crazy Youthful Feeling). In Hindi with English subtitles. At Paragon, Central Rama III and Major Ekamai.
The second decade of our lives can be considered the most exhilarating yet confusing years we will ever experience. While there are feelings of invincibility, falling in love, leaving home for the first time and taking chances, there is also something about truly growing up that sometimes douses that fearless fire with the Arctic realities of life. This Bollywood romantic-comedy gives you a taste of everything you will ever feel between 21 and 30 through a group of chums: Bunny (Ranbir Kapoor), Aditi (Kalki Koechlin), Avi (Aditya Roy Kapur) and Naina (Deepika Padukone), the bookish daydreamer who decides to join the group's Manali trekking trip at the last minute.
On receiving a glitzy wedding invitation in the present day, Dr Naina recalls the day when as a reclusive medical student she ran into Aditi, her punkish and peppy classmate who she hasn't seen since childhood. Out of impulse and agonising desperation for a life beyond studying books, she joins Aditi and her best friends Avi and Bunny on a trek that is going to _ you guessed it _ change her life.
It is cringe-inducing to watch how the sheltered introvert struggles to fit in with her carefree hooligan friends, but Naina eventually ditches her square glasses for contacts and emerges in totally bootylicious hotpants, dancing free-spiritedly at the Holi festival to the colourful number Balam Pichkari (an energetic song, but not quite infectious). With snow, haunted mountains, gang chases and bonding along the way, Naina seems to open up and there seems to be hope for this nerdy beauty after all. On the other hand, there's less so with Aditi's reluctance to confess her love to Avi, Avi's foreshadowed failure thanks to his drunken gambling addiction, and even less for the self-centred lady-charmer Bunny, who is too me-deep in himself to sense Naina's love for him. Ranbir's portrayal of the cocky yet slick Bunny is a familiar (and successful) serving, and with that, he heads off to Chicago on a scholarship after the trip, never looking back.
Fast forward eight years _ it's now time to untangle the problems all those rosy and not-so-rosy memories led to, except, you don't really feel that there are any pressing problems. In fact, it's startling how it's hardly a tear-jerking moment when Naina decides to keep her love for Bunny unprofessed, nor when Bunny admits to being a terrible son after he misses his father's funeral due to work and gallivanting around the world. Frustratingly, emotionally laden moments like these don't seem to reach a peak that lets the waterworks flow.
The second half of the film, in the expected gargantuan Indian wedding (and all its baggage) style, is not quite as magnetic as the first, as it follows the four friends' lives at Aditi's nuptials. After all these years, no one really seems to have grown up, but how this one plays out could help pass the hours, depending on your tolerance level for annoyingly sudden and unconvincing "aha!" moments. There's no epic tale of love and friendship here, but the impressive dance numbers are not a miss. Watch it for the attractive cast, especially Kalki, who has managed to depict the truly wild madness of youth, the return of the golden couple (Deepika-Ranbir) on the screen and also before Ranbir's swaggering playboy act, no matter how swoon-worthy, starts to get old.
