Student of the Year

The first thing that comes to your mind when you hear Karan Johar is a Yash Chopra mark movie, with heroin standing on a icy mountain, with wind blowing at full speed making her hair dance like a bunch of cobras.

However the movie that KJo wanted to make this time was partly different, I am saying partly because you still get to see the icy mountain, but instead of heroine you see a girl who looks like someone who has bunked the school, granted the movie is based in and around school, but only the heroine i.e. Miss Bhatt looks like a school student, rest of people are seriously from post graduation I believe, however what makes the movie interesting for me is the other part, where actually you see a director who can make a movie beyond a love story.

Don’t get me wrong, this movie has all that Mr. Johar is famous for, love, dysfunctional family, lots of money, two new comer heroes and an underage heroine. But the movie has also competition in its core, the passion to succeed and fear of failure and the changing interrelationship between friends. To be honest I myself became curious in the second half of the movie that who is going to win the award for Student of the Year. This is his side that the director had not shown to public before.

Let me be very clear on a few point here, the director is the man who makes the movie work, because he has become such a good story teller that minor flaws in his movie are overshadowed. Like in this movie the part where both the heroes are not comfortable with their respective families is more of a cliché than anything else. To be honest the track between Varun and his father looks forced on the story as it is not well conceived.

Performance wise Siddharth impresses and Varun shows sign for decent performances, but as far as leading lady is concerned a little less talented director and reality will strike like lightning. However the actor who impressed me the most was Kayoze Irani, he is a talent to look out for, I will appreciate the director for having his focus not only on the lead 3 characters but giving substantial roles to supporting characters as well, not only that but their charters also have a few shades.

Story is decent so is music, the narrative is definitely very fresh and stylish, on the whole the movie makes a onetime watch, but bear in mind the overacting you are going to encounter at various moments during the movie.

Rating **1/2