‘Yeh Jawaani Hai Ghissi Pitti’, ‘Yeh Jawaani Hai Puraani’, ‘Yeh Jawaani Nahi, Bachpanaa Hai’ or ‘Wake Up Sid (Hangover version)’ could easily become alternative titles for ‘Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani’ … no , let me change that a bit, more suitable titles for Ayan Mukherjee’s second effort … no, not really an effort, more an attempt at direction.

This time he serves you cold soup and that’s not the worst part, he also serves you the same soup. With a heavy-handed deal; It feels like the old lunch lady from your college canteen made the soup. That’s how lazy Ayan Mukherjee is this time: her story is hackneyed, her dialogue is stale, her characters are hackneyed, her situations are cliché, and her resolutions are boring. This guy seriously needs to get out of this phase of “following your dreams”, “accepting change”, “settling down”; yes, he had his chance on ‘Wake Up Sid’ and it went well, but this is a simple lethargy as a director.

Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani’s plot deconstruction will begin with a cliché: it is about four young friends. Oh, a respite: two are boys and two are girls, so it’s not the ‘male-only movie’ or the ‘girls-only movie’. This movie begins with one of the girls reminiscing about her past, while the other is getting married. The girl who narrates is Naina Talwar (Deepika Padukone), and takes us eight years to the past, when she was studious, simple Jane, good girl Naina. And since all good studious girls must be spectacular, she wears one. He still looks sexy in it, but since it’s Bollywood and shows equals ‘behenji or nerd’, the guys completely ignore our Naina.

She is in the supermarket with her snobbish mother, shopping in her miniskirt / shorts (she’s showing her legs anyway, but no one notices because she’s wearing ‘glasses’). Hear someone yelling near the check-out counter; is Aditi, his former schoolmate. Aditi is angry at a burly young woman who was checking her legs (according to her). He tells her that she’s not that sexy, that she gets angrier. Naina walks up to her, they greet her, Naina’s mother talks about her daughter, Aditi praises Naina for being the ‘padhaku’ type and then tells her about her trip to Manali. The scene ends with Naina secretly invited by her on the trip.

Next scene at the dining room table. Naina’s mom insults Aditi for being the ‘bad girl’. Naina throws a tantrum with ‘I want a vacation’ and then gets up from the table. Next we see her visiting Make My Trip Site, probably co-sponsors of this movie because they are everywhere! Our brave girl Naina runs away the next day and joins Aditi for the journey, but Aditi is not alone, she is with Bunny and Avi.

These two guys were already introduced to us: Bunny is the photographer who dreams of traveling around the world (for some reason Ayan can’t think outside the box; Ranbir Kapoor in Wake Up Sid = photographer, Ranbir Kapoor in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani = photographer) while Avi is an alcoholic who loses a lot at gambling (I have no idea how he gets the money). First we find Bunny in a brothel filming with a foreign crew about prostitutes; so there’s the usual ‘spicy chat’ with the prostitute, then a totally purposeless dance number with Madhuri Dixit. But we know why it was added – it’s a Karan Johar production, she was a judge with Dixit on a dance reality show, she must have thought it appropriate to randomly place her in a dance number that has NOTHING to do with anything. However, she looks beautiful and her dancing is sensual and expressive, but why the hell (or why in a brothel of all places) is she there?

So Bunny is the photographer who calls his stepmother ‘stepmother’ (ridiculous and childish, why not the first name?), Avi is the (useless) alcoholic faltu, Avi is the cool girl and Naina the ‘scholar’. They all board the train to Manali, their trip is sponsored by MAKE MY TRIP (they could have made the four of them break the fourth wall and shout ‘I love Make My Trip!). They meet hot girls, and Bunny has a crush on one of them named Lara, a hot but silly girl like the one you see in all the other college movies; the girl actually has background music every time she’s on the screen and it’s so childish that your brain feels ashamed that she has given you the power to hear these sounds. Okay, on the trip, our Naina slacks off (wears glasses and voila she becomes a crazy hot babe in a day), starts to enjoy life (gets drunk. Don’t tell her fussy mom) and falls in love of Bunny. who has a commitment phobia. There is a scene where both Naina and Bunny scream from the edge of a hill and you really wish they slipped and fell to their deaths so the movie could surprise us.

The movie never surprises us. Our hero Bunny goes to America after the trip, Naina becomes Aditi’s best friend, Aditi decides to marry a plump boy named Taran after Avi does not reciprocate her feelings for him, while Avi remains a drunk and is in debt. The second half is more embarrassing and most of it revolves around Aditi’s marriage. Random characters come and go and we are meant to laugh (we don’t, not once). There are the ‘serious friend movie scenes’ that we don’t care about; It’s a bunch of cliché-filled banal moments you’d find on Facebook, written by IQ 100 guys and girls who just think their shitty thoughts run deep.

One thing that I observed in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and noticed in other commercial Bollywood films, but did not bother to report, is the absence of spontaneity between the actors. Take the scene where Deepika and Ranbir are alone in the camp and she can’t resist him; she holds his hands even after the conversation is over.

To show this, Ranbir has a dialogue ‘So why are you still holding my hand?’, Which then reveals his hand holding hers. Wouldn’t it have been better to frame the two characters from a distance and show her spontaneously holding their hands and not leaving them? It was a pleasure to watch Meryl Streep and Eastwood fall in love at Bridges of Madison County because they both responded slowly without the need for any mechanical gestures or movements. However, Bollywood thrives on mechanical movements that feel inauthentic.

Deepika is more than tolerable as the nerdy woman, but her character is so easily transformed into a beauty queen just because of the horrible notion that wearing glasses makes you nerdy. Ranbir is a method actor and I really wonder what he thought about the randomly inserted dance numbers. Did you ever ask Ayan why her character could dance and sing like a pro? Or probably his bank account was so overloaded with Johar’s money that he overlooked everything else. Kalki and Aditya Roy Kapur are passable in their poorly written roles.

This type of film that mints hundreds of million rupees at the box office is pure criminality. Don’t encourage Ayan Mukherjee to do more like these! Stop Johar from making money like this!

And reconsider your Make My Trip subscription if you have one – they’ll take you to Kashmir, calling it Manali! (In case you’re wondering, the filmmakers have been accused by Omar Abdullah of shooting in Kashmir and then considering it Manali in the movie)