Student Of The Year 2 : Reviews and BO Discussion - Page 12

Student of the Year 2’ review: A campus less ordinaryAn image from ‘Student of the Year 2’. Photo courtesy: Twitter/@SOTYOfficial

Namrata Joshi10 MAY 2019 15:49 ISTUPDATED: 10 MAY 2019 15:51 IST

‘SOTY 2’ mixes ‘Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar’ with ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’ but loses its own self on the way

Watching films like Student of the Year 2should come with a statutory warning: that it is extremely injurious to the health of senior citizen critics like yours truly. The film doesn’t just make you acutely conscious of the fact that you have one foot in the grave but builds up this larger existential crisis—how like the mummy papa, chachi chacha, principal, teachers and coaches on screen you see are almost redundant in the larger scheme of things of the post-millenials. Other than the young friends and collegemates, no one else is of any consequence in the film; everyone above 20 is shoved to the periphery—either a prop-like presence (coach Manoj Pahwa) or a convenient stereotype (principal Sameer Soni).

But then hasn’t every new teen rom-com on the block done this to the previous generation? Didn’t this happen two decades ago as well, when Kuch Kuch Hota Hai turned fantasy, aspirational colleges into a legitimate setting and campus capers as a winning formula? A formula that was ably taken forward by Student of the Year.

So there is Mia (Tara Sutaria) who holds forth on growing up and evolving but as a veteran viewer you know that the more things change, the more they remain the same. “We are young and we are crazy” line might get added in the remix of Ye jawani hai deewani but it is still the old classic that is making them spin.

Student of the Year 2

• Director: Punit Malhotra
• Starring: Tiger Shroff, Tara Sutaria, Ananya Pandey, Aditya Seal, Manoj Pahwa, Samir Soni, Gul Panag
• Storyline: Underdog, middle class Pishorilal College has to get the better of the rich and privileged St Teresa by winning the intercollegiate Dignity Cup
• Run time: 145 minutes

Despite the fresh, young faces at the centre, a staleness looms large over SOTY2. The same old fairytale castle for college building (despite being set in Dehradun/Mussorie), the same old triangle—Archie with Betty and Veronica vying for his attention. In this case there is Rohan (Tiger Shroff) with Mia (Tara Sutaria) and Shreya (Ananya Pandey) for company. The same candyfloss lives, designer clothes with newer, fancier labels and omnipresent pom pom girls, irrespective of whether any crucial game is being played or not.

College life is all about having fun with a gang of friends, having a romantic interest and rivalry with another gang. The students play, dance, visit night clubs but, in the time-honoured tradition of mainstream Hindi films, they never study; all they learn is to distinguish between being in love and being in friendship.

To be fair SOTY2 tries to be a little different, by adding a little Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar to K2H2. The poor “Pishorilal ka fukra” gets pitched against the “St Teresa dude” in the game of kabaddi, in much the same way as Model had a face off with Rajput in a cycle race in JJWS. But caught between two cult films, SOTY2 isn’t able to acquire a personality of its own.

Sutaria has poise, despite all the plastic packaging; Pandey who is irritatingly ditzy to start with, manages to strike some likeable notes. But the film clearly tries to draw from and make the most of Tiger’s appeal amongst Generation Z—so he dances, shows off his muscles, runs races, plays kabaddi and fights the roguish collegemates. All of this, while looking oddly tired and disinterested.

And if it’s the modern, can the traditional remain far behind? In the name of being ambitious, a young girl like Mia is made to come across as stupid and flighty. “I want to make my own life than be someone else’s life,” she says and you know right there that in the modern conservatism of the film’s world, she will regret it later. Eventually, the only million rupee question the film left me with—will kabaddi now become cool?

Film review: ‘Student of the Year 2’ gets a D for dispensable2 min read . 03:54 PM ISTUday Bhatia

• Tiger Shroff is a student athlete with a point to prove in Punit Malhotra’s film
• Karan Johar produces this sequel-in-spirit to his 2012 ‘Student of the Year’

In Student of the Year 2, everyone is vying for something called the Dignity Cup. Laugh all you want, but this is a Karan Johar production, and it makes sense that people are fighting to come out of it with dignity. “I haven't changed, I’m evolving," Mia (Tara Sutaria) tells her childhood friend and soon-to-be-ex, Rohan (Tiger Shroff). I don’t think one can say the same about Dharma Productions, which, with two clunkers (Kesari, Kalank) already under its belt this year, provides the answer to the question no one was asking: what if Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar was a Johar film?

It’s a Punit Malhotra film, but it’s really all Johar – his preoccupations, his visions of excess, his fondness for triangular and quadrangular love stories. Like Student of the Year (2012), which he directed, this too is about male high school students in Dehradun trying to best each other at various sports and the female students who cheer them on and fall for them. Rohan transfers from Pishorilal Chamandas to the elite St Teresa, only to find that his girlfriend, Mia (formerly Mridula), now has eyes only for the school champion, Manav (Aditya Seal). He’s soon butting heads with the golden boy, and with Manav’s sister, Shreya (Ananya Panday), aspiring dancer and professional meanie.

Though it isn’t fit to wear its white shorts, Student of the Year 2 is a glossy facsimile of Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, with the Pishori boys as Model College and the privileged Teresa students as Rajput. Much as the garish displays of wealth in Dharma films can be irritating, it’s nothing compared to the excruciating experience of seeing them awkwardly stick up for the common man. Who can forget Malhotra’s Gori Tere Pyaar Mein, in which city dude Imran Khan saves a village and is rewarded by a little boy telling him “I be like you, bro"? Rohan must see the emptiness of Teresa and its students for himself and return to his roots, but not before saving Shreya from a life of extreme privilege and parental disapproval (my favourite scene in the film is when Shreya, after getting slapped by her father, decides to do an interpretative dance).

In Student of the Year, Rishi Kapoor, as dean of St Teresa’s, is shown lusting after Ronit Roy’s coach. There’s a call back of sorts here, when the newly arrived Rohan is told by Shreya that the coach (played by Gul Panag) likes “strong, fair boys". As Rohan tries to charm his way into the team by stretching seductively in front of her, I wondered if any film would have played this for laughs with the genders reversed. It gets worse. A woman with short hair and spectacles arrives. She hands Panag a cup of coffee and starts massaging her shoulders. She tells Rohan, “This is ma’am, and I’m her ma’am."

Because Shroff is in the lead, there are a couple of fights, some kabaddi and a whole lot of unnecessary running. A jumping-dancing-fighting hero, words seem to emerge from him with difficulty; he's more comfortable staring down Manav than verbalising his feelings to Mia and Shreya. He’s a little old to be playing a college student, though a bigger problem is Johar’s apparent belief that he still has the pulse of young viewers. The hall I was in was only a third full, and there were only dry eyes in the house when Shreya, her family having forgetting her birthday, buys a cake, lights a candle and sings to herself. No trophies for the writer, but give Panday a small dignity cup.

Ok so Tara is like the character whom Aamir fallen in love with initially and Ananya is like our very own Amrita Rao's Sanju?

Student Of The Year 2 movie review: In Tiger Shroff, Ananya Panday’s film, textbooks are props and props are stars

Student of the Year 2 movie review: Tiger Shroff, Ananya Panday and Tara Sutaria star as a new batch of students/professionally bred actors in sequel to Karan Johar’s 2012 film.

By : Raja sen

Student of the Year 2
Director - Punit Malhotra
Cast - Tiger Shroff, Ananya Panday, Tara Sutaria
Rating - 1.5/5

First love works the first time. Pehla Nasha was the loveliest song of the smitten — at least for those among my generation — and it worked because of its wistfulness, where the idea of falling for someone felt as special as your own private whirlwind, something nobody would quite understand. Student Of The Year 2 aspires to tread on the same tracks as Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, the film Pehla Nasha was from, but wears romance like an accessory: a medallion that can bounce off the hero’s pectorals. “Mere liye school pyar ka mandir tha,” says the hero without a touch of irony. “Love temple.”

Irony is in predictably short supply. In this laminated depiction of college life, the boy is capable of all superheroics as the girls cheer him from the sidelines. At some point an actress, whose wardrober definitely worked harder than she, wears a skirt with the words “Need No Stylist” printed across it. Directed by Punit Malhotra — who once made the insufferable I Hate Luv Storys — this attempt at Archie Comics wants to be frothy but emerges merely aerated. The film exists exclusively to flaunt Tiger Shroff’s physique.

The film exists exclusively to flaunt Tiger Shroff’s physique.

The spine of the story comes from the still-refreshing JJWS, as mentioned, but here the college rivalries feel hollow throughout. This is largely because the boy, Rohan, played by Shroff, isn’t allowed to put a foot wrong. He sprints record-breakingly fast, is the king of kabaddi and seems to dance at a different frame rate. It is dashed difficult to root for an underdog when he’s the only one on the scraggly team with a sponsor logo on his vest.

Student of the Year 2 is an attempt at Archie Comics. It wants to be frothy but emerges merely aerated.

Still, Shroff is sincere. As is Ananya Pandey, who takes a poorly written character — the super-rich brat who sobs into her birthday cake — and at least attempts to give her a vibe, and Aditya Seal, who has fun playing Reggie With The Good Hair. The kids aren’t intolerable, the motives are. The film lacks drama, conflict and narrative tension, with dialogues written for mannequins. The atrociously fit Gul Panag shows up as a sports coach allegedly horny for fitness, but by the climax shakes her head as if unable to bear these childish shenanigans in the guise of sport.

In the world of Student of the Year 2, textbooks are props, and props are stars.

At one point the guy sits at a cafe table, flanked by the two hysterical girls, one of whom holds a love letter. He’s asking them not to cry while they keep calling him ‘Ro,’ which is Hindi for ‘cry.’ (He seems obedient.) As Archies go, this is a truly mediocre double-digest. It didn’t surprise me when an economics class (the only example of studying) was interrupted on a whim. In this world, textbooks are props, and props are stars.

SOTY2: TARA SUTARIA & ANANYA PANDAY’S DEBUTS SUFFER AT THE HANDS OF LAZY WRITING

REVIEWS by KUNDAN AHUJAMAY 10, 2019

How do you tap potential without having any in your own self?

Everyone wants a great grand debut, especially when you are a star kid. So after Karan Johar launched Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan and Sidharth Malhotra in his 2012 directorial, Student of the Year, and developed it into a series, the film came to be known as a launch pad – so much so that Kareena Kapoor Khan in one of her interviews has jokingly said that lil Taimur Ali Khan will make his debut with Student of the Year 10, alongside Karan’s twins, Roohi and Yash Johar. Well, I hope this is far from the truth. And I’m not talking in terms of ‘nepotism’. The second instalment in the series, which serves as a launch pad to Ananya Panday and Tara Sutaria is so bland and redundant that we do not want any more of this mess.

My problems with Student of the Year 2 are varied and on multiple levels. First and foremost, it is a waste of talent. By looking at Ananya Panday and Tara Sutaria perform, you cannot tell if they are good actors or not, because their characters are two of the most poorly written characters in the history of Indian Cinema, and we’ve had films like Kya Kool Hain Hum, Thank You, Rascals in the recent past. So what these girls are capable of, whether they have potential and if they do, how do they need to improve is all a big question mark. Secondly, SOTY2 is a waste of resources. Filmmaking is an expensive art, especially the kinds in which the characters wear nothing below Gucci, Off White and Moschino.

THERE ARE BRILLIANT SCRIPTS ROTTING AT THE OFFICES OF THESE PRODUCERS AND THEY CHOOSE TO HELM A SCRIPT BOUND BY PATHETICALLY LAZY WRITING AND IGNORANCE.

Student of the Year 2 is casually sexist in almost all places. And where it’s not, it becomes voyeuristic – in the name of Tiger Shroff, Ananya Panday, Tara Sutaria or even Aditya Seal. Song and dance is good to look at, but not when the intention is to show off – moves or muscles. The fact that Manav’s (Seal) sole purpose is to prove to Shroff’s Rohan (K3G reference?) that at the end of the year he will have the Student of the Year trophy in one hand and his girlfriend (Mia, played by Sutaria) in the other is downright degrading and tells you right there where the women in this film belong. The first instalment of the franchise had Alia Bhatt’s Shanaya taking charge of various situations, but here, Mia and Panday’s Shreya are reduced to nothing but flower pots. This film is a celebration of Tiger Shroff. And the worst part about it is that it doesn’t celebrate his absent acting prowess, but rather his muscles, and the way his body moves.

Gender apathy is further displayed in the fact that the SOTY competition is an inter school competition and there are no girls participating in this competition. So, Arshad Sayed (writer) and Punit Malhotra (director), are girls not worthy enough or do you think of them as just eye candy?

IT’S 2019 FOR GODS SAKE, I AM NOT GOING TO CLAP HANDS ON A “PINK IS FOR GIRLS, BLUE IS FOR BOYS” JOKE. AND IT’S NOT EVEN ACCEPTABLE.

And why does the film not have young men playing young boys? Tiger Shroff is 29 years old, Aditya Seal 31. They’re both playing 20 year old boys, fresh in college. We do not have a dearth of young actors but still need an expressionless Tiger Shroff to helm a film?

And where is the writing? Y’all forgot to write a plot, a story, characters, scenes – everything. The writing is so pathetically laid back that they try to sell Mia and Rohan living in Mussoorie but attending school in Dehradun with a daily commute. Hello, hostels exist, and would’ve been ‘believable’, if not real. Scenes come and go, the actors are doing their thing but absolutely nothing is happening. There is an empty void that you’re trapped in and the only thing you can see is the EXIT sign below the screen. There is supposed to be a love triangle between Rohan, Mia and Shreya but there is no love. The characters don’t have enough meat in them to portray feelings – of love, hate, anger, whatever.

Talking of the performances, the men, Tiger Shroff and Aditya Seal are the biggest misfits in the film. On one hand, Shroff has nothing going on, on his face. The only thing that is in sync with his expressions is the emptiness of the script. Seal, on the other hand suffers the case of at the hands of dull screen presence. He acts better than Shroff, but isn’t charismatic enough to pull of the bad guy. The girls – Ananya Panday and Tara Sutaria are reduced to being trophies and cheerleaders. They’re a part of the narrative to clap, kiss and dance at the drop of a hat. As I mentioned earlier, their performances cannot be judged because they’re given almost nothing to play with. Even then, both seem to promise potential. Panday has a coruscating screen presence and has fun throughout, but her expressions remain very limited. Sutaria on the other hand, seems like a mature performer who’s been given the sloppiest character ever written. She shows good potential, but it’s too soon to say and a very poorly written character to judge.

THE BENCHMARK FOR SOTY2 WAS SET LOW.

Student of the Year was not a cinematic genius. But it kept you going. The sequences weren’t brilliant, but the film was watchable and all of this because that film didn’t take itself seriously. SOTY2 demands you take it seriously and that’s where the problem begins and the graph of this film falls. At least the former film had Alia Bhatt’s untapped potential; the sequel promises nothing as such.

SOTY2 could have been a film about so much – family problems in Shreya and Manav’s household, differences between students in colleges due to economic disparities or even modes of transportation between Mussoorie and Dehradun would’ve set an interesting premise.

Finally, are we going to talk about how problematic the Hook Up Song is? It’s 2019. Of course, with dating apps, there is a hook up culture in today’s youth, but is that something we need to promote by a way of films? I don’t think so.

All in all, #StudentOfTheYear2 bears the burden of lazy writing, ignorant research and gender apathy along with poor performances.

I’m disappointed with the reviews. I was looking forward to seeing Tara in the big screen but lots of people are saying her character doesn’t have much range and is poorly written 🤔

Bad reviews as expected

Student of the Year 2 Review:

Tiger Shroff’s Muscles -the Most Talented Member of the Cast

BY POULOMI DAS MAY. 10, 2019

Student of the Year 2 is a bland and thoughtless knockoff of its predecessor. It lacks originality, so much so that “Ishq Wala Love” becomes the intolerable “School Wala Love”. With Ananya Pandey and Tara Sutaria reduced to props, it seems like the movie is written only for Tiger Shroff’s muscles.

It’s that time of the year again when we’re forced to memorise the first rule of Bollywood: When star kids are confused about their future, they don’t take a gap year. Instead, they get launched by Karan Johar.

In 2012, Johar, the torchbearer of nepotism and dedicated investor in non-existent acting talents, created Student of the Year, an entire cinematic franchise designed to only launch newcomers. Back then, he engineered the debuts of Alia Bhatt, daughter of Mahesh Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, son of David Dhawan, and Siddharth Malhota, son of his parents, in the frothy yet entertaining college love triangle that was committed to its silliness. To be fair, Johar wasn’t very off-mark with his prediction of their stardom: Today, two of these actors are the biggest names in Bollywood and the other has a lot of followers on Instagram.

But seven years later, Johar seems to have learnt from his mistake of launching newcomers who could actually act. Student of the Year 2 – now directed by Punit Malhotra – stars three newcomers: Ananya Pandey, daughter of Chunky Pandey, Tara Sutaria, the token outsider getting rewarded for her genes, and Tiger Shroff, who remains a newcomer to acting even after five films.For a majority of the film’s 145 minute-long runtime, the three leads get by without giving as much as half an expression, doing the kind of non-acting that could only make Arjun Kapoor feel less alone.

From the very first frame, Student of the Year 2 feels like a bland and thoughtless knockoff of its predecessor. Instead of bringing any iota of novelty, Malhotra comes across as a filmmaker desperate to recreate the successful formula of Student of the Year by unabashedly borrowing its elements. The sequel repackages two songs from the earlier installment – “Ishq Wala Love” becomes the intolerable “School Wala Love” and “Munda kamal ka” is re-used for Shroff’s introduction. Like SOTY that recreated “Gulabi Aankhen”, even its sequel destroys another classic with a completely avoidable recreation of “Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani”. And as per tradition, the second installment mines a homosexual character just for laughts: If in SOTY, Rishi Kapoor played a flamboyant gay principal in a way that indicated that he had never actually met a gay person in real life, Gul Panag is a lesbian in this version. She is readily forgotten after one scene.

Worst of all, Student of the Year 2’s leads are foggy mirror images of the original trio who can boast of having as much personality as a cardboard: Shreya (Ananya Pandey), is a millionaire’s neglected younger daughter with daddy issues. Of course, she uses it as an excuse to be a terrible human being. Mridula, who goes by Mia (Tara Sutaria) plays the “complex” character of a damsel in distress, and Rohan (Tiger Shroff) is the orphan underdog who is allergic to his feet touching the ground. (The makers concoct an entire scene around Rohan jumping through innumerable roofs to reach Mia’s house.)

For a majority of the film’s 145 minute-long runtime, the three leads get by without giving as much as half an expression, doing the kind of non-acting that could only make Arjun Kapoor feel less alone.

While Sutaria registers arguable screen presence, her unbelievably underwritten character reduces her to a forgettable prop whose only contribution is to cry on demand.

On the other hand, Pandey – playing that stereotypical “cool girl” whose coolness relies on her acting like a dude – acts like she is the prop: The actress, visibly awkward on camera, keeps widening her eyes to convey her emotions.

In fact, the lack of backstory accorded to both the female leads is ample proof that Student of the Year 2 is written only for Tiger Shroff’s muscles, that at times, feel like the most hardworking and talented member of the cast.

At this point, criticising the Student of the Year franchise for being unrealistic is a lot like the trajectory of Fardeen Khan’s career: absolutely irrelevant. It’s not like Dharma Productions prides itself on making movies that unflinchingly depict neo-realism on screen. But even then, the stakes in the sequel are at rock-bottom: Set in Mussoorie, this time around, the “Student of the Year” competition is an inter-college event that sees the posh St Teresa’s college battle it out against the modest Pishorilal College. So there’s ample recycled rich boy vs poor boy drama that rests on Shroff threatening “Din tera hai, saal mera hoga” to anyone who will listen and two overgrown men fighting with each other for a girl who ends up with neither of them. Think a reluctant love-child of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, and Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander, but without all of its humour: That’s Student of the Year 2 in a nutshell.

In SOTY, the competition had a purpose: It comprised a triathlon, treasure hunt, and an IQ examination and the winner received scholarship for an Ivy League college. That can hardly be said about this latest version that is weirdly sexist: No female student takes part in the “Student of the Year” competition which inevitably becomes a yawn-worthy brawn-fest between fragile male egos. When the two female leads aren’t being reduced to cheerleaders, they’re bestowed with a dance competition that lasts for the duration of one song. And for some inconceivable reason, the winner of the “Dignity Cup”is solely decided by multiple undignified rounds of what the world knows as “kabbadi” but what Tiger Shroff mysteriously interprets as “gymnastics”. In what comes as a surprise to no one, Rohan’s winning move in the kabbadi competition involves several backflips. Why run when you have the budget to still be a flying jatt?

Perhaps, the only time where Student of the Year 2 supersedes all expectations is while conceiving one of the world’s most useless love-triangle: Rohan, Mia, and Shreya, fall in and out of love with each other within seconds, as if they’re choosing a hashtag for their Instagram post and not a partner. The three leads declare their feelings as disinterestedly as one is while repeating their grocery list to a shopkeeper. It’s the kind of love story that assumes that Shreya yelling “duffer” to address Rohan three times a day is essentially first base and an acceptable reply to a serious “Do you love me” question is “I love this small-town wali insecurity”. It’s also probably the only romance where its hero has more chemistry with the ground than the two actresses.

In an interview, Malhotra, whose incompetence haunts the film, claimed that the writers completely rewrote the film three months before the shoot, to guarantee that the script was perfect. One hour into the film, it becomes clear that it could have only been possible is if the earlier draft of the script was a blank page. The only way the infantile plot of Student of the Year 2 would be acceptable is if it was a two-year-old rambling in his sleep: It is so illogical that even its plot-twists feel like they’re ashamed to be labelled as a plot-twist. The problem with the film isn’t that silly entertainers can’t be enjoyable but Student of the Year 2’s utter mediocrity betrays overconfident film making that refuses to evolve.

In case you think I’m exaggerating about the ineptness that the writing that Student of the Year 2 proudly displays, an actual conversation between two characters plays out like this: In between giving Rohan a cliched pep talk about believing his dreams, a relative (the film is so lazy that it forgets to mention how they’re related) asks him, “Talent ko angrezi mein kya kehte hai?” “Hunar” replies Rohan with a straight face. Even discarded scripts must have more complexity than Student of the Year 2.

https://www.arre.co.in/bollywood/student-of-the-year-2-review-tiger-shroffs-muscles-ananya-pandey-tara-sutaria/

This was flop the moment alia Bhatt became associated with this movie . Remember ranbir has propensity to damage career of his gf's

Student Of The Year 2 Movie Review by Anupama Chopra | Tiger Shroff | Film Companion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XEuQhZvG_Y

someone please embed.

Film Companion‏Verified account @FilmCompanion More

REVIEW: #StudentOfTheYear2 goes from #HighSchoolMusical to #ChakDe – we even get a training montage and a locker room speech – but with very little humour, even when it’s downright silly. Here’s @anupamachopra’s take on the film:

Student Of The Year 2 Movie Review by Anupama Chopra | Tiger Shroff | Film Companion