Student Of The Year

Its been a while since I went into a film that stood for the typical NRI audience & had all the elements that go into making a candyfloss, high-school musical. With Karan Johar directing, one defintely expects a lot from the venture. Does it deliver?

Boring, directionless & lacking soul, this ones a drab fair thats just dazzles visually.

While going for the movie, I kept in mind that Im not going to look for an original script or masterclass cinema, but I still wanted to be moved. If a Kjo film cant touch a chord then it is going terribly wrong.

3 students. 2 jocks, 1 hottie (or so to say). A dating B. B likes C. C also likes B. You know the drill.

Throw in unbelievable production values, 2 starkids, some fantastic songs and you get SOTY.

Credit where its due:

Vishal & Shekhar great music.

Varun Dhawan pitches in with an exciting debut.

Visually, the film is impeccable.

Alia Bhatt makes one of the most uneventful debuts in recent times. Siddharth is decent.

All in all, this is a musical meant for teen girls who want to see the ripped debutants & not those looking for any sort of emotional connect.

When I saw Kajol do a cameo jig in the song Disco Deewane my mind went back to 1998 and to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai in which she said “mera pehla pyar adhura reh gaya riffat bi" and the song Tujhe yaad na meri aayi kisise ab kya kehna. that film for me has always been about that line and that song. Everything else was glossy entertainment. It was fresh and for a 21 year old me highly romantic.

Cut to 2012. Karan Johar is back with a youthful film introducing newcomers in the lead for the first time as a director.

Set against a backdrop of a world that reminds you of the still fresh Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander, Soty is less a love story and more of a comment on the education system in India. It's a story about friendship and the competition of life.

So you have a rich spoilt brat Rohan (Varun Dhawan) and an ambitious poor boy Abhi (Sidharth Malhotra) fighting over the trophy of student of the year getting their love life triangled for Shanaya (Alia Bhatt) along the way.

Shahrukh Khan produced a youth film on his own and failed. Yashraj tried too with several films and got it right with Mujhse Fraandship Karoge but Karan Johar proves it that to give the audience a fresh batch of newcomers you have to give them in larger than life doses.

It takes time to warm up to the newcomers but at the end they succeed at leaving a good first impression on your mind. Sidharth Malhotra shines the best amongst all but my favorite performance was by Boman Irani's son Kayoze Irani as pseudo.

Give me a Karan Johar of Soty over him doing a My name is Khan or Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna and I have no complaints.

he film doesn't speak to my generation which I realized after chatting with an 8 year old girl who is a big fan of this film. Especially it's songs and Sidharth Malhotra.

Word of mouth - If you can't get Kuch kuch hota hai out of your head while watching Soty, stay away. But if you can enjoy the film for what it is go ahead and enjoy escapist cinema at its best.

Rating - 3.5 (good)

Ticket meter - worth a theatre visit

Karan Johar's new film is an unabashed celebration of Bollywood-ism that is shamelessly and quite unapologetically alienated with reality, set in an altogether different world. Soaked in nepotism, the film introduces two star-kids, both quite promising - especially the girl, Aalia Bhatt, who becomes the center of affection of two muscular High School boys.

The dramatic premise is quite simple but largely exaggerated - poor, young and good-looking Abhimanyu comes to the premium institue of India - St. Teresa's -- an elitist organization where girls rhyme songs with designer names and boys park their Lamborghini's on a pre-designated spot. Abhimanyu, we are told, broke that class-divide, although during the course of the film, it never really strikes us how, other than the fact that he makes-out with the college snob's girlfriend.

The snob is Rohan Nanda, played by Varun Dhawan, a rich brat harbouring dreams of being a musician while his industrialist father laments on his incompetence. The two clash in the Student of the Year competition - a Muggle's Triwizard tournament (which doesn't lead you to Voldemort, but to flights of fancy, both inspired and insipid)

Karan Johar follows the Jaane Tu ... narrative technique of a bundle of friends from High School reuniting and narrating the story. The difference is that the actors here break the fourth wall, unlike the Imran Khan film.

Throughout SOTY, there are a number of references to Bollywood, both direct and indirect. The humour is plain cheesy, the lines sophomoric; yet the film brims with the emotional prowess that only Johar can bring.

An underlying theme is that of displaying masculinity and how it can take one places. The film deals with this notion, but only as an afterthought, despite this being the essential idea of the film. Both, Varun Dhawan and Siddharth Malhotra flaunt their chiseled bodies, while Aalia Bhatt struts around the campus like a desirable hottie. The film consistently brims with sexual energy and the young vibe, makes SOTY very, very attractive.

Among the actors, Dhawan shows remarkable promise while Malhotra has a subtler part, one that asks him to internalize his feelings. Aalia Bhatt is shockingly good. She's classy and convincing, probably being the youngest helps.

On the whole, I would call SOTY everything that Bollywood royalty represents - a show of power and selective elitism. Karan Johar packages his film with such fanatic glamour, it is blindingly gorgeous. The scale of production is humongous.

But the crux of the idea remains superfecial and is addressed rather abruptly in a climactic monologue. Yet, the glitzy wrapping is too tempting, and the cheesiness highly enjoyable for the fact that it is unpretentious. There are hints of homoeroticism, both blatant satirical and the subtle, cleverly placed.

For a college-going kid, SOTY wouldn't be a human drama, it would be a fantasy film. Very, very aspirational.

I don't know if you missed Karan Johar movies but I sure did. I metamorphosed from secretly being a fan of his movies to being extremely vocal about them because well, I truly am (his first two films). I like to call him the King of Kitsch. I grew up in the 90s and thoroughly enjoyed those romantic sagas. Life would be easier if you went into this film knowing whether you like typical Karan Johar films or not. If you don't, just don't watch it. You'll hate it anyway. If you do, you're in for a good time.

Student of the Year is about a fictitious school in Karan Johar's head. His Hogwarts. He has the money and the power to put whatever is in his head onto the screen. I saw the trailers and wondered why out of all the concepts in the world; he would choose to make a film about a friggin' competition in a friggin' school! Kuch Kuch Hota Hai had a better premise!

But as soon as the film begins it dispels all your preconceptions as the fourth wall is broken and four characters narrate the story to us. We are told this school had its own world. Before you know it, you stop questioning it. For the first two hours it is glossy entertainment with good looking people being introduced with remixed songs (Papa Kehte Hain and Gulabi Aankhe) that reminds you of High School Musical and Glee. Then a bit of Gossip Girl. But this is Karan Johar's show. He sprinkles his trademarks and creates something which brings back the Bollywood we knew (romantic fluff) and not what it's become (masala).

The two boys fall for the same girl and then there's a competition for the student of the year. There are over-the-top situations of games and contests which are never boring. But then there is also a 5-minute sequence sans dialogue with a soft piano on the soundtrack where he goes for subtlety (in his own way of course) and you're certain that you're watching something cinematic. That's what his movies are: cinematic.

Sidharth Malhotra and Varun Dhawan make good debuts, so does Alia Bhatt. But the clever casting of a strong bunch of supporting actors works wonders. Rishi Kapoor is absolutely brilliant. Shameless stereotyping but who cares! Ronit Roy and the four friends are ably cast. Only Boman Irani and Farida Jalal were wasted.

(Minor spoiler) If I have to summarize what I felt for Student of the Year it would be this: the secret ingredient is missing. All of his movies have a scene with a bench but here the main characters don't get to do that scene. That secret ingredient can be further analogized by the presence of Farida Jalal. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham had Farida Jalal. Here, she gets only 3 scenes and then dies. You get what I mean? (End of spoiler)

Teenagers will love it. Grown ups will enjoy it with reservations. Why? Because we obviously aren't teenagers anymore. The older you are, the more you will find a disconnect. I wasn't moved by it either but I didn't dislike the film for its lack of emotional depth. The only quibble I had was with the ending. 10 years later, they at least shouldn't fight like teenagers, talk like teenagers. If you're going for subtle drama, go the distance. It didn't spoil my experience but I would have loved the movie if it wasn't for the lazy wrapping up of a grandiose package. All in all, this is mostly a fun movie.