I just finished watching Karan Johar’s Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani on the big screen. And I can’t stop smiling. It felt like the first time.
Of course, one has seen it earlier, not only when it first released in 2013 but subsequently too. But there is a kind of irresistible magnetism to this rom-com, as though the characters have grown on us over the years. We can go back to them ten years hence. They would have grown on us even further.
This time I felt I knew Bunny’s restless mind better than when I met him in Ayan Mukerji’s film the first time. Bunny is basically an escapist with an emotional insomnolence. Does Bunny sleep well at night? Will he finally sleep well after succumbing to love which he has resisted for as long as it could be put off?
In Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani, Ranbir Kapoor plays a character as close as possible to his real life. Anyone who knows him well(not many do) would tell you he makes light of every situation.For years he never connected with his core. Now after marriage and fatherhood he is in touch with his inner world.
One wonders how Ranbir would have played Bunny now…. As we see him in this ravishing rom-com, Ranbir doesn’t play Bunny. He plays WITH Bunny, teasing emotions out of a character which would rather keep it all inside. Main zindagi ka saath….you know the rest.
When we first meet the trio of bumchums—Bunny, Avi and Aditya—they are about to take off on a trek to Manali, when suddenly they are joined by Naina who is infinitely bored with her life. The trip is an eyeopener, in more ways than off. Naina’s chashma comes off. She has found her inner self.
Curiously, the process of the characters discovering themselves in this film is snarled with sleeping dogs. Avi (Siddharth Roy Kapoor’s most honest performance) is a sodden loser. Nothing in his life works out, not even his relationship with Adi(Kalki Koechlin).
And why the hell is she getting married to the dorky Taran Khanna (played by Aditya’s talented brother Kunaal Roy Kapoor). It almost feels like Kajol’s impending wedding with Mr Wrong Salman Khan in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. The world has moved on since then. Adi realizes she can never be happy with Avi. To this writer, that love story is the tragic one.
Naina and Bunny are destined to come together. Mukerji scatters Karan Johar’s trademark aesthetics, the tongue-in-cheek humour, into every nook and corner of this irresistible homage to the that thing called love. Not a moment has wrinkled in the eleven years since the film was first released. There is no fast-fade frame, no moment that you would like to leave out in this viewing.
Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani is the best way to start your movie viewing odyssey in 2025.
