Director: Ayan Mukerji
The Indian Express rating: **
It's been a few minutes since I stepped out of Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, and I'm finding it hard to remember what I've just seen. This is not the sort of amnesia that you have to force yourself into after a bad, blah film. This is because I've seen this brand new film, and its characters so many, many times before. Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani is a been-here, seen-this, much- too-long glossy creature, and not much else.
Ranbir Kapoor plays the I-want-to-fly fellow who doesn't want to be tied down. Familiar? Oh yeah, we've seen a hundred variations of Bunny aka Kabir Thapar. Deepika Padukone is Naina, the proverbial girl in the glasses, always with her nose buried in a book , always driven to doing the right thing. Seen that before? So when Bunny and Naina meet and bicker and get intense and part, we know where this is headed. Which we are ready for, because that's what romantic comedies are about. But the thing with the best rom coms is how the oldest story in the world—boy meets girl, and they live happily ever after—gets a fresh telling. On that crucial test, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani scores low.
The supporting parts, essayed by Kalki Koechlin and Aditya Roy Kapur, her as the cool chick who then does the conventional thing like saying yes to an arranged marriage, and him as the hero's best buddy who turns hostile for no convincing reason, are also cobbled from bits and pieces. Because it is a Karan Johar production, we get the big fat Indian wedding, the 'geet' and the 'sangeet' and the whole 'zardozi', 'lehenga', 'mehendi' shebang, in multifarious doses. We also get Madhuri Dixit as Item Girl, and she blanks out as soon as she's out of sight, too.
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