{"id":56928,"date":"2012-10-30T17:46:18","date_gmt":"2012-10-30T17:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/test.tehelka.com\/?p=56928"},"modified":"2012-10-30T17:46:18","modified_gmt":"2012-10-30T17:46:18","slug":"the-coming-out-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/the-coming-out-party\/","title":{"rendered":"The coming out party"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By\u00a0<strong>Ajachi Chakrabarti<\/strong><br \/>\n<figure id=\"attachment_56934\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-56934\" style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Student_of_The_Year.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-56934 \" title=\"Student of The Year\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Student_of_The_Year.jpg\" alt=\"Student of The Year\" width=\"250\" height=\"209\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-56934\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><strong>Student of The Year<\/strong><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><strong>DIRECTOR<\/strong><\/span><br \/>Karan Johar<br \/><strong><span style=\"font-size: small;\">STARRING<\/span><\/strong><br \/>Sidharth Malhotra, Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt, Rishi Kapoor<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\n<strong>PERHAPS I\u00a0<\/strong>should apologise to Dharma Productions and Red Chillies Entertainment for allowing outside events prejudice this review of their Parent\u2019s Day-cum-Debutante Ball that is\u00a0<em>Student of the Year<\/em>. Maybe I would have thought more favourably of the film \u2014 unlikely, but possible \u2014 if I hadn\u2019t seen it hours after Yash Chopra\u2019s death. Karan Johar, like so many other cogs in the Bollywood machine, has never shied from borrowing tropes from the man who wrote the very formula the industry strives to emulate. However much he tries to hide it in the stratospheric heights of an \u00fcber-elite Dehradun school, Johar falls back on the tired narrative devices of song-and-dance sequences in exotic locales, where romance is expressed only through Urdu poetry, and the world revolves around the lovebirds\u2019 daily drama.<br \/>\nUnlike Chopra, Johar does not understand the power of empathy in the Bollywood formula. Chopra would construct very Indian social barriers that audiences identified with, however contrived they were. Johar\u2019s protagonists are Delhi-brattified characters straight out of\u00a0<em>The OC<\/em>, surrounded by a bunch of stereotypes masquerading as a supporting cast. Rishi Kapoor is hamstrung by playing a closet homosexual whose raison d\u2019\u00eatre is to get a cheap laugh. He spins it by playing a Mr Weatherbee instead of a Dean Pelton. It makes him likeable, but doesn\u2019t add depth.<br \/>\nLikeability is the only thing the actors strive for in this most commercial of films. What little negative traits seep in are caused by, and blamed on, an illogical Triwizard tournament decided on the basis of a triathlon where male and female students compete in the same race. The events serve to eliminate all who threaten our two sculpted alpha males, There is the cheesiest of reconciliations by the dean\u2019s deathbed.<br \/>\nLikeability is something the film should have strived for itself. It is very difficult to watch it without a negative attitude with your overpriced popcorn. The blatant nepotism does it no favours. Neither does the spectacle of the protagonists infesting your TV for weeks before to shill for soaps and ecommerce websites. I\u2019d love to say that the new generation\u2019s youthful energy helped, but like India\u2019s political dynasties, the young simply bring more of the old. Just with fewer wrinkles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> Karan Johar, like so many other cogs in the Bollywood machine, has never shied from borrowing tropes from the man who wrote the very formula the industry strives to emulate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":56940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21],"tags":[8040,2358,412,7275,8051,7057,7576,3981,8080,8081,8082,7480],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56928"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}