Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani

Style: Fantastic! Substance: Meh.

I mean, it was still completely worth the ticket price. I really enjoyed it. But it ended up being a lot more pedestrian than I had been hoping. I watched Cocktail in April, and I was so impressed by Deepika that I really started looking forward to this movie, but she didn’t have a lot of room to do much. Post-interval it was all Ranbir, Ranbir, Ranbir. He got all the good choreography, all the montage songs, and all the backstory, but it didn't really make me like his character any better.

I don’t want to discount the flashy stuff, though. Most importantly, MADHURI ON THE BIG SCREEN!

I’m not sure why they stuck the song right at the beginning of the movie, or why Farah Khan couldn’t come up with something a little fancier for Madhuri, but that’s not important. This and Balam Pichkari are my runaway favorites, but the entire soundtrack is great, all the dancing is flashy, and all the outfits are glamorous.

The movie opens with shots of wedding invitations and Naina (Deepika Padukone) reminiscing about her school friends and. . . back in time we go. 8 years prior, Naina was a nerd studying for med school and Bunny (Ranbir Kapoor) was a spunky Discovery Channel intern who wants to be a big shot world-travelling reporter.

Wait. No. THIS spunky wannabe reporter:

Luckily for us, Dips takes over for the hot pants portion of the role here.

Naina tags along on a post-graduation trip with Bunny and their classmates Aditi (Kalki Koechlin) and Avi (Aditya Roy Kapur). They have hilarious Himalayan hijinks, Ranbir does his obnoxiously charming thing that he does so well, and Kalki is crazy adorable. Naina falls for Bunny, even though he has no interest in this shaadi-vaadi nonsense and has an entire monologue comparing women to a variety of regional food choices. He’s awfully sweet to Naina, though, and you can’t blame her for being completely infatuated.

So cute!

At the end of the first half, Bunny leaves for a journalism program in the US. We come back to a song montage of him being super-journalisty. He has a big camera! And an ugly beard! He’s successful, but disconnected!

Turns out those wedding cards at the beginning were actually for Aditi’s wedding. She’s grown up and is making much better makeup choices, but still adorable. The second half of the movie is about the four friends and how they navigate their relationships as adults, and of course how Naina and Bunny meet again.

Still so cute!

Ranbir, of course, does a good job making Bunny seem less shallow than he ought to be, and his scene with his stepmother at the end is great. Honestly, though, by that point I was bored. I heard in an interview that the director wrote his character with Ranbir in mind, and it shows. I suspect it works better for people who actually like Ranbir Kapoor the star, and not just the actor.

I did like Deepika’s performance. She did a reasonable job of keep continuity between shy, easily infatuated Naina and the mature, confident version. I just wish we got a chance to see anything from in between. Why is it that she enjoys her settled life so much? I assume she’s become a doctor like she’d planned, but aside from one mention of “the clinic” I don’t remember any talk of her career.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t get all mushy at the ending. It was cute. It just wasn’t very satisfying. I mean, at the end of DDLJ, you feel like Raj and Simran deserve to ride off into the sunset after all they’ve been through. At the end of YJHD, you are just hoping Naina and Bunny know a good premarital counselor. Despite all that, I’m eagerly waiting for the dvd release for the fun and the glitz and the warm fuzzy feelings.