YAARIYAN is a coming-of-age film directed by Divya Khosla Kumar, starring Himansh Kohli and Rakul Preet Singh in the lead roles. The rest of the star cast includes Serah Singh, Dev Sharma, Evelyn Sharma, Deepti Naval and Gulshan Grover.
The film revolves around "college life" and how a group of 5 Indian college-goers must battle against Australia in a range of activities to save their college while undergoing life-altering situations.
I'll just get straight to it: this film is just plain awful. Now I know that my summary of the review above is extremely harsh, I apologize, but its nothing but the truth, and believe me, if you're still reading, there's gonna be a lot more of it.
Now, first thing's first: the promos and hype. That's all great, I mean, they used the music and the fact that its 'from the makers of Aashiqui 2' to distract you from the ACTUAL story, in fact, the trailer itself doesn't even give you a real insight to what you're getting into. Normally, that's a good thing... but for a film so bad, its a downright con, and its totally like having a guy's pocket money stolen.
If you skipped on reading the story synopsis and if you're planning to watch the movie, I STRONGLY suggest you read it IMMEDIATELY. It makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER, in fact, it looks like a cheap rip off of Student of the Year (which wasn't that good either) but in comparison to Yaariyan, the former looks like we're comparing the latter with 3 Idiots. There's no better way to put it; its obnoxious and I don't know what the staff of the film saw in the script. I don't even understand what it has to do with college life. In the case of SOTY, we understand that the competition takes place every year, so it's completely justified... but in the case of Yaariyan, it isn't like we have the name of the film talking about a competition, its about friendship, and I'm sorry to say that the film failed in portraying that as well.
The acting was just alright; most of the stars were new-comers, therefore mostly immature. The only good ones were those who have been in Bollywood for years; Gulshan Grover, who had less screenplay, and Deepti Naval, who was my favorite of the two; she portrayed her emotions and character with such accuracy (which everyone else failed to do) that you actually wished the story could be better to support her acting. Himansh Kohli had potential, and you could see he had the charisma, being he's like I said earlier: immaturity was at its finest in all the youngsters (including him).
AND I shall leave the only best thing (and saving grace) of the film for last: THE MUSIC. BRAVO TO ALL THE MUSIC DIRECTORS. The music was so good that it was the ONLY reason I was sitting in the cinema till the end. I haven't heard a better album since Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, and the film delivers such great hits like "ABCD", "Sunny Sunny", "Baarish", "Allah Waariyan"... even the not so popular ones were great, especially "Love Me Thoda Aur". By the end of the film, I sat wondering whether the film was just directed for the songs, and a cheap plot was added just to have a background to the songs. Whatever it was, it worked to an extent because when I left the cinema I felt that my ticket money was justified only because the music kept me hooked. Its a shame though, that such a song like "Sunny Sunny" that gained global recognition belongs to such a poor film.
In conclusion, I'd tell you to watch YAARIYAN only if you were only interested in the music. If you can't wait to watch the way the movie blended with the music, I'd suggest you watch it in a single screen, because it's not worth the full price. And if I could lead you with one last message, it's that YAARIYAN is not completely rubbish, because I'd rather enter the cinema and watch the music and some of the extremely ridiculous situations it has rather than sitting and staring at a wall for 2 hours.
YAARIYAN- 2/10
