Student of the year -review

Karan Johar’s directorial venture Student of the Year, starring debutantes Sidharth Malhotra and off springs of Hindi Cinema’s film making biggies Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt, acts as a perfect launch pad for their entry into the industry. It more than often seems like a big catalogue quite literally as the actors re-introduce themselves through songs and boxers akin John in Dostana at various junctures in the first half. Also Sidharth’s character’s entry almost reminds us of Hritik’s college entry in K3g.

The film is about Rohan (Varun Dhawan) a rich brat disregarded by his father for his rock star dreams,Shanaya (Alia Bhatt) another rich girl in a step family looking for love and Abhimanyu (Sidharth Malhotra) an extremely ambitious ‘bata’ boy from a small town aspiring to become absolutely successful ,thrown into a 25 year old structurally flawed completion ‘student of the year’ started by the dean (Rishi Kapoor).

The film’s storyline on the outside looks as a comment on the structure of competition in a student’s life but at its core is about the friendship between the two alpha males (Sidharth and Varun).This is precisely why Alia Bhatt seems to descend down to a supporting character. The movie doesn't allow too much acting scope; still Alia seems to fit the shoe of the drama-queen-yearning-for-love character. Varun Dhawan and Sidharth Malhotra both show good acting skills, look good throughout with their good physique and boast good dancing skills.

The movie adopts the tried and tested as well as very much in vogue flashback style of unfolding the story so that the audience remains excited till the end but sadly the story from the beginning seems very much predictable ,even the trailer spilling the beans since the time it glossed the media across the nation.

The dialogues of the movie by Niranjan Iyengar are very appropriate, realistic and quirky at times lending the movie various comic reliefs. These comic scenes hold the movie together preventing it to go down under. The costume designing by Manish Malhotra is again apt for all characters including the supporting ones, except for the deep low v-neck sherwanis worn by the leads in the song Radha which looks irritating. The first half is consistent of a lot of portfolio frames making it seem like an ad film .The plastic appearance of the schools and colleges have been common on the celluloid but here even a character’s comment that St. Teresa “koi normal school nahi tha” fails to defend its hyped portrayal as after the characters are introduced and the plot shows their lifestyle a retort by Shanaya(Alia) that “mera abhi lecture hai” makes the audience think “really?”  .

The music by Vishal and Shekhar is intelligent as it reprises old songs at many places .The disco song, velle and ishq wala love being hit numbers. But the songs surface in very short successions which seem like a tactic to cover up for the short plot whose crux shown in the second half. Therefore major action unfolds in the second half.

Compared to other big production movies like Dabangg , Om Shanti Om and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi which also launched debutants along with superstars Sharukh Khan and Salman Khan, Karan Johar through this movie balances the new entrants with an awesome supporting cast featuring the ever so brilliant actor Rishi Kapoor , small screen’s Amitabh Bachchan –Ronit Roy, Ram Kapoor with his strong screen presence ,the all time favourite dadi Farida Jalal ,Manjot Singh of Oye lucky lucky oye and the grown up in surprising avatar Sana Saeed– the little Anjali from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai .

Given the incredible half like and half dislike for the movie trailer on YouTube, for those confused this movie although predictable manages to hold one time watch tag. Fulfilling the standard Kjo style film making  this is a grand rocket launching the three newbie.