The movie opens to a scene of a play in motion, one that's telling the story of Indo-Pak war. When suddenly there's a scene that requires "Ma", only "Ma" is busy kissing her boyfriend backstage. Such is the comedy. Pretty immature. It is to save your from the torture of watching this movie that reviewers like myself are writing this. I give half a star to the movie, like I do to most, purely for the effort of making the film.  Yaariyan is an entirely disappointing film. The characters are flawed, and the acting is fake. There's not story or plot in the film. Lots of action, lost of attempt to create drama, and not-so-great dialogues take over the movie. Avoid watching the film.

Yaariyan seeks to pass off the most putrid and regressive ideas as representative of the thoughts and aspirations of Generation X.  It is pretty apparent that the makers believe that their work is outrageously funny. Well, it is outrageous all right. It certainly isn’t funny for those at the receiving end. Calling Yaariyan silly would be the understatement of the year. It is mind-numbingly idiotic. It is the sort of film that makes Student of the Year look like Au Revoir les Enfants. The cast is composed of a cluster of fresh faces, a couple of them rather promising at that, and yet newness is the last thing that Yaariyan exud Yaariyan talks about a whole lot of other things – friendship, trust, patriotism, race attacks and tolerance – but makes no sense at all. It would make perfect sense to give this film a miss.

Yaariyan, it was claimed, is a college romance. But if you look closely, you will find that it is not one but several college romances put together such as Jo Jeeta Wahi Sikandar, Main Hoon Na and Ishq Vishk. Divya Khosla Kumar casts fresh faces on a budget of Rs 11 crore, swings the camera from Sikkim to Australia and plays in to every stereotype about teens under the sun and I still cannot figure out what the film was about to begin with. Yaariyan may be targeted at a young audience but every single teenager who chooses to watch it will be insulting their own intelligence.

‘Yaariyan’ is meant to be many things as we keep discovering as we are dragged along its unending length. A youthful college film. A patriotic film that waves the Indian flag in faraway Australia and our own Sikkim. A love story with a fresh pair. And a container for some popular songs.  Of all the boxes it tries to tick, this exhausting two-and-a-half hour product does best with the last one. Because for the others, there needed to have been a plot. Which is non-existent. ‘Yaariyan’ seems to have been cobbled together from ‘Main Hoon Na’ and ‘F A L T U’, and ‘Student Of The Year’, even going back to ‘Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar’. If you can find other sources of ‘inspiration’, please add in.  They should have just compiled the songs, a couple of them hummable, in a CD, instead. 

'Grease' was the word. Helping hormone-rushed youngsters slide into puberty and outta tight-fitting pants. 'Yaariyan' could have been the word. About friends, first-kisses and hot flushes. Peppered with candy-crushes and teenage desires furthest from reality. So we have Bettys and Veronicas crushing on extra-smiley Archies, all the while shaking their 'toohs' and 'tees' (beep, beep!) at beach parties. Of course, with thoda ambition, kuch-kuch competition, and mostly out-of-classroom lessons. The story has twists and turns, but no surprises. It packs in too much variety of thought bubbles (parties, patriotism, racial discrimination) in this boarding school drama. There are emotions, but the scenes or characters don't go deeper than the gloss, flipping quicker than their touch screen smart phones. The runtime is a tad long and songs (well-shot) one too many. 'Yaariyan' is nothing to gush about, but the teenies can watch this one for a lark...and some yo-yo beats!