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Yaariyan (U/A)
Director: Divya Khosla Kumar
Cast: Himansh Kohli, Rakul Preet, Gulshan Grover, Deepti Naval
Running time: 145 minutes
Yaariyan is death by film. Mind numbingly dumb and overwhelmingly stupid, this is the kind of film that believes that bikini bods, titillating talk, picture-postcard frames and some hummable music can make up for the lack of plot and performance.
Directed by debutant Divya Khosla Kumar, who once shared screen space with Amitabh Bachchan and Akshay Kumar in the eminently forgettable Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Saathiyo and is now Mrs T Series, Yaariyan is the kind of film that was born out of a five-minute dinner table conversation (Wife: ‘I’m bored’. Husband: ‘Make a film’.)!
Set in a college campus in Sikkim (though it’s shot at Darjeeling’s St Joseph’s North Point), there’s nothing real in the world of Yaariyan. Girls prance around a snowed-under campus in next-to-nothing, students are found everywhere but in class and hostel dormitories are done up like Barbie playhouses. Every frame is an overdose of shocking pink — from the bolsters on the hostel beds to the peekaboo sports bras. The guys in this film wear more pink lipstick than the girls.
The smart alec on campus is Lakshya (Himansh Kohli) who’s looking to get his first kiss from the college bimbo, a Paris Hilton wannabe who outgrew her wardrobe a long time ago and carries her pet cat around college.
Punished for messing up the college play because of their antics, Lakshya and his three friends are asked to redeem themselves through a task: defeat an Australian college team in a series of contests to help prevent their own college from being converted into a hotel and casino by a burly Australian tycoon, who looks like a cross between Bharat Dabholkar and Bob Christo. Yes, it’s that lame a film.
The four are joined by the college geek Saloni (Rakul Preet) and wing off to sunny Australia, an excuse for the women to get into their teeny-weeny bikinis and for the boys to serenade them, from the Sydney Opera House to the Great Ocean Road. Chess to music, biking to rock climbing, there’s a lot to be done to save the college. No prizes for guessing who wins in the end.
Yaariyan is packaged as a youth film. But is being young only about getting wasted or getting laid? In almost every frame, the camera only searches for cleavage, thrust in the audience’s faces and almost invariably bathed in everything from champagne to Chianti. Women are portrayed as man-eaters, ever ready to seduce at the drop of a pallu. And when the college nerd decides to get cool, she organises an open house kissing swayamvar!
Yaariyan, offensive on so many levels — gay stereotypes to good girl ethics — could have been forgiven if it was all fun and fluff, but Divya often brings in the serious — racial attacks to caste discrimination to patriotism — with unintentionally hilarious results.
As it labours on for close to two-and-a-half hours, you expect Yaariyan to spring a surprise at some point, but the film only keeps going downhill. Even the songs — ABCD to Sunny Sunny — that worked so well in the promos, start grating after a while.
Of the young cast, Rakul Preet shows some promise while Evelyn Sharma graduates from playing the dumb blonde in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani to the dumber blond here. Himansh Kohli, with zero screen presence and irritatingly goofy grin, is miscast as the leading man. Gulshan Grover, as the college principal, desperately tries to keep a straight face, while Deepti Naval looks embarrassed to be in the film.
Riding on positive buzz, Yaariyan had the potential to be an entertaining weekend watch. Instead, it’s a film where your eye will be on just one thing — your watch [or maybe on the cleavage for some of you].
