On "Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani"

(Spoilers! Not explicit ones, but still!)

Ayaan Mukerji's sophomore feature possesses a number of annoying traits that are standard-issue in lesser Dharma movies. The first half indulges in way too much of the cornball humor so beloved of The House That KJo Built. Here, these bits are mostly centered around a vapid firang named Lara; they are sporadically funny but never inspired, and feel uneasily written in, a little cheapening even. The background score is wall-to-wall and sometimes intolerable. We get the tinkly fairy sounds and the swell of the orchestra in a romantic scene, we get sound effects straight out of 2003 in a comic scene, we get a creepy-ass chorus of children going  ooh and aah in scenes of wonder and discovery. Also, the film gives us the tomboy-to-girlie-girl makeover that we've seen in both Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Student of The Year. (The latter turned the spunky, interesting best-friend character into a kurta-clad homemaker whose unnecessary transformation is apparently explained by marriage and childbearing. I don't mind a female character dressing in a more stereotypically feminine manner, and boy, does Kalki Koechlin work the series of outfits that could probably cost as much as one of hubby Anurag's productions. But why, in 2013, are we still making lesbian jokes about a girl who doesn't wear pink? And why does the shift in her look need to be commented upon, as if it were an indispensable, highly desirable change? What else, one might ask resignedly, can one expect of a film where the female characters have their legs out in several costume changes on an uphill trek, while the males stay fully clad. Ugh, am I right?

Now that I've completely convinced you that this film is the no-good, very-bad kind, let me admit that, despite the litany of quibbles I've listen above, I really enjoyed Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani. I know, you guys. I didn't see it coming either. The first half was pleasant , but rarely much more. Bookish Naina (Deepika Padukone) takes an impulsive trip to Manali with kids she knows from school, and falls for rakish Bunny as he expounds at length on his world-traveler ambitions. In the process, she loses the glasses, opens up, and learns how to have fun. It's basically a Disney Channel film with grown-up Bollywood stars, well-acted and travelogue-pretty. You worry that it is going to get worse, and you're going to be subjected to that insufferably played-out "love vs. everything else" conflict once again.
But, post-intermission, the film takes an unexpected turn for the better. It's as if Mukerji decided his writing needed to grow up just when his characters did. Bunny meets Naina again, eight years after the trek, at a friend's lavish destination wedding in Rajasthan. He's a travel journalist, she's a doctor. Amid the revelry - and there is quite a bit of revelry - sparks fly. 

In his tender debut, Wake Up Sid, Ayaan Mukerji kept plot minimal and unfussy, and patiently allowed his protagonists to find their place in the world. Here, too, the narrative is slight. Most of the heavy stuff happens offscreen. One of the characters loses a parent, another fails at making his passion project work, a third gives up on unrequited love and finds the requited kind. We don't see these life-changing moments happen, but we see how they've shaped Bunny and his friends. 

The early parts of the film didn't prepare me for how interesting the writing would get as the narrative unspooled. The initial reels tell us things they've already shown, and don't tell them in particularly original ways. Bunny waxes poetic about his love for traveling, calling it a "nasha" (addiction); his scrapbook, his wall-collage, and his own admissions have already driven home his globetrotting ambitions, though. Naina's love for Bunny is writ large on her face, but she, too, informs us in voiceover that she feels "ishq ka nasha." We get the sense, as one often does in these films about upper-class, westernized Mumbai youngsters, that the lines ought to have been in English. 

Thankfully, Mukerji mostly gives up on the clunky abstractions as the movie goes along. We now know who Bunny and Naina are, as do Bunny and Naina themselves; no more explication is necessary. Now the film lets its characters slowly rediscover each other, altered by eight years of experience. Bunny might be running away from significant baggage  on his voyages, but his choices aren't condemned. His friend Aditi (Kalki Koechlin, wonderfully unvarnished as usual) has made a surprising choice of her own, but, in a lovely revelation, we learn that her choice isn't a compromise. Naina's contentment with her life, her family, her medical practice is sweetly telegraphed; she doesn't need to, or want to, get away from her life, even for love's sake. Mukerji steers the film toward familiarly explosive filmi territory - a potential romantic rival (not Rahul Khanna, surprisingly) is introduced, the big wedding looks like it might fall apart at the mandap - and then calmly turns away. He isn't looking for explosions, and he isn't looking to punish his characters into an epiphany, either. Bunny isn't wrong for wanting to go places, and Naina isn't wrong for wanting to stay at home. They both know this, and they don't need to fight about it. They just need to figure all of it out. 

A plot this uneventful would be an interminable bore if the leads were flavorless. In a Ranbir Kapoor joint, however, you don't need to worry about the leading man's performance. By now we're all aware that Ranbir can do charming in his sleep. (Even the magnificent La Dixit, giving you your money's worth even before the film properly gets going, looks entirely delighted by his shenanigans in the rousing Ghagra number.) He is by turns glib and goofy. He flirts with everyone, he GQs it all over Paris, he sings, and dances his way through a series of songs that may not stand alone memorably, but look and sound terrific in the theater. But he is sharpest when the film asks more of him than easy likability. In the scene where Bunny finds Naina in dishy male company, Ranbir goes from pleased to pissy with an almost scary absence of effort. He also gets fine moments with Farooque Shaikh and Tanvi Azmi (Mukerji has a gift when it comes to writing and casting beautifully believable parents.) My favorite moment in the film is the one in which Farooque Shaikh, one of the all-time greats at onscreen geniality, says goodbye to his U.S.-bound son. This scene is saved for the end in a marvelously effective bit of non-linear storytelling, and it has an aching realness to it. Not gonna lie, I cried a little.

In my piece on why I was ambivalent about the film, I wrote quite a bit about why I was worried about Deepika Padukone's performance. But as Naina, Deepika finally manages to overcome the banality that has plagued her in many of her non-glamazon roles. It helps that this is a good part, not a stock love-interest role. Naina doesn't pine away when the love of her life leaves. She develops friendships, she builds a career, she buys a killer wardrobe of sexy lehengas and flattering salwar-kurtas. Deepika gets just about all of it right. She conveys Naina's initial tentativeness, her quiet sorrow at having lived a cloistered life, and the wonder of first love with such warmth that it isn't at all hard to empathize with her as we once did with Kajol in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.  She still acts better with that luminous face than with her voice, but her line readings here don't give you the impression that she painstakingly memorized her dialogue and is trying to say them just right. 

Deepika also generates tremendous chemistry with Ranbir. He plays it so that Bunny seems drawn to Naina even before she joyously finds her mojo (and killer white shorts) in the Balam Pichkari song. And who coud blame the dude when Deepika looks so radiantly moonstruck around him? When he pulls her in for a dance, and wants to hold her for five more minutes, it is both swoony and sad.

There is quite a bit that irked me about YJHD, but even more that surprised and impressed me. It is a pleasurable little movie that is determined to give you a good time while managing a surprising amount of depth and maturity. I kinda loved it.