Sometimes the unexpected can happen. After watching the trailer and songs from Student of the year, I was skeptical about the movie as the peppy-love-jealous-girlfriend-hunk cool dude kind of movies was way beyond my league for the past couple of years. However, SOTY was a change, a good retro into the movies of 90s and a refreshing experience at it.

The movie stars newcomers – a first for producer-director Karan Johar who up till now, only worked with the country’s biggest stars, namely Shah Rukh Khan. The introductions of the lead players – Rohan Nanda (Varun Dhawan), Shanaya Singhania (Alia Bhatt) and Abhimanyu Singh (Siddharth Malhotra) are done interestingly.

There are many flaws to it. however, you will find it easy to accept and move on. At its centre, Student of the Year has a fun and engaging 'bromance' between two high school boys who come from opposite sides of the tracks.

Rohan Nanda, played by Varun Dhawan, is a rich brat, while Abhimanyu Singh, played by Sidharth Malhotra, is a middle-class scholarship student. Like Rahul and Anjali in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, the story of Rohan and Abhi's friendship and falling out is a school legend. But too often, this relationship is swallowed up by the overwhelming gloss, perfect styling and set-piece songs. The entire narrative hinges on a school competition that is so silly and shallow that it's hard to take any of it seriously.

Unapologetically aspirational, wearing its pedigree on its sleeve, Student of the Year plays out in a Gossip Girl-like universe, where feelings are surface-level and everyone’s a frenemy. The rich kids live it up extravagantly, while the rest (and even their families) aspire for membership into this exclusive club. In Johar’s world, clearly your biggest crime is being poor. This is the kind of world where the rich kid’s obnoxious dad flies half the campus to Thailand on his private jet to attend his son’s marriage.

But it’s also true that Student of the Year doesn’t ask to be taken seriously. This is Johar's "holiday movie"; intended to show you a good time. So you have Glee-style introductions to the three leads in snazzily choreographed set pieces, a soundtrack of bubblegum hits, crisply edited sporting sequences, and outrageous humor like a track involving the dean’s crush on a strapping (and married) football coach.

All three -- Varun Dhawan (strumming a guitar in a shirtless avatar to flaunt his chiseled torso), Alia Bhatt (playing the young fashionista to the hilt against a Gulabi aankhen remix) and Siddharth Malhotra (ramp walking on the campus, anyone?) --receive a smashing introduction befitting of star kids.


While Dhawan is the quintessential neglected, black sheep of a filthy rich family who whiles away his time aimlessly, Siddharth is a go-getter, small-town boy with the single-minded goal of nabbing the Student of the Year trophy. As for Alia, she's just an affection/attention-hungry kid with a wardrobe that could put Cher [ Images ] Horowitz to shame.

Alia has a striking innocence and is an absolute livewire in her introductory scene exhibiting the screen presence of a star. Somehow the script itself doesn't have too much for her. She's not expected to convey anything beyond a wide-eyed, slow-witted campus diva.

If you have patience and a taste for the overblown, check the film out.