I saw a film after a reasonably big break by my standards. I was actually drawn to this, thinking it will be an introspection on how certain students evolved in their current lives vis-a-vis their past student lives, as there have been some Hollywood films made with a similar idea in the past, but not very convincing ones about a group of acquaintances/friends - past and present.
MAIN CAST
Sushant Singh Rajput aka Anirudh Pathak
Shraddha Kapoor aka Maya
ESSENTIAL PLOT
The story essentially dwells upon how the child of a couple of former college sweethearts (currently divorced), feeling pressure about achieving good results, decides to commit suicide and almost succeeds. This drives his parents to come together, along with their former college pals and narrate a story to their partly conscious child (amidst his hospitalization) about why even the worst losers in the history of their student life, didn’t deserve to be called so and how they strived and succeeded in losing that image. That is also what he should draw upon, to lose his worries. This is not the suspense aspect of the film, the suspense is about "what is the story that they narrate". So, no spoilers here.
THINGS TO NOTE ABOUT THE FILM
THE STORY: This turned out to be more of a scrutiny of a student group’s past lives rather than the present and not really a scrutiny of their current lives w.r.t. the past as such. Therefore, in that way, the "new" aspect was nullified.
The main thing the film delved upon, was a certain student groups’ hostel/college life, with focus on a moral, supposed to help a dying child. Not a bad story but it had certain idealistic aspects.
DIRECTION & PERFORMANCES: I think the direction was adequate to go with decent and believable performances.
I’m not sure who shines more amongst the cast. It was an adequate ensemble performance rather than someone standing out big in this case. Some may have been a tad better than others.
SPECIAL EFFECTS & CINEMATOGRAPHY: This was not a "special effects" kind of film and the cinematography was good in general. This also wasn’t the kind of film which required lots of songs in between.
BEST SCENES: I think there were a lot of hilarious scenes in the film and some of the created characters were also quite hilarious by default. It was a believable depiction of hostel life. I mean having endured hostel life in 2 educational institutions in the past, I know it can be even worse for some. Glad all that is in the distant past now and I managed to avoid most of the less enjoyable aspects in my life.
The best scenes for me were:
1] How "Bevda" finds himself in a predicament when he is quietly having vodka mixed with water in a train and when a child wants some of his water feeling very thirsty, he is not able to give it to him, nor able to disclose why. That leads to the child and his parents getting very peeved at him.
2] How "Maya" and "Anirudh" end up doing the things to strike up a relationship they would probably struggle to do on their own while getting ragged, is also nothing less than serendipity for them. Good for them!
3] How "Mummy" (a character in the film), ends up injuring his own finger on his own when there were 6 others to fight with is also quite hilarious and ridiculous in the way it unfolds.
There were many more good scenes in the film.
THINGS I FELT WEREN’T THAT GREAT:
1] Maya and Anirudh’s child is near comatose and Anirudh gets emotional and starts narrating a story saying something like, "You think you are a loser, right? Let me tell you a story about some losers." Nothing wrong till now.
This is supposed to have caught the child’s attention in bringing him back to consciousness, when the doctor mentioned he is not making any efforts to be conscious as he does not want to live it.
I understand that Anirudh’s attempt was to make him realize he was no "loser", but he only mentions what happens at the end and why his child shouldn’t feel like a loser. So, why would a child who has given up on life, be excited enough by that story as Anirudh’s opening sentence and what follows doesn’t give him any hope, necessarily? It’s not like he was deprived of his father’s college stories before and suddenly felt excited to hear them.
It is true that stranger things have brought back people to consciousness, but what is not believable is something which doesn’t really seem relevant when the Anirudh’s story starts, would have such an extreme impact on a near comatose child.
2] It is also not very likely if a certain team is known for being so bad, would be able to perform so well even with the highest motivation, all of a sudden because a new person in their team who is somewhat capable as most of the events they are playing to win a championship require hardcore team effort. Of course, there are a lot of events in life where people are in a team but individual performances have a greater chance to shine amidst it all. But it wasn’t really so in this film. Focus was always on main cast, even in hardcore team games, which would be difficult to win alone.
OTHER THINGS:
Well, one thing I recalled on seeing all this is that too often I’ve seen students focusing too much on sports while they are at college/school, especially in a hostel kind of setup. It’s good for all round development. But if you see our nation’s output in terms of any of those becoming international stars, it is very poor, in general. Other than cricket, we generally tend to do well in something where there isn’t a lot of focus or fare relatively poorly in areas where there is a lot of focus by other nations when it comes to sports. So, it’s a poor career prospect. Does being a temporary sports star during one’s educational years really give people that much of a high, I wonder. Or really worth it? But this is not a criticism of the film. It’s just a relevant aspect to ponder over.
Other thing is that although Anirudh tells his son something like "Results don’t matter. Just the effort does." While there is certainly some truth in it in the sense one could certainly learn from that experience and I do not blame him for bad parenting, the actual thing that matters is "results". "Lack of results" is not a pleasant memory for anyone. While "results" is what gives one a definite direction or indication to gauge anything.
All in all, a hilarious watch and touches upon some realistic aspects of hostel life. But I feel there were some unrealistic/idealistic aspects which prevent it from being better or more original than it was.