Chhichhore - Movie Review

In the opening scene of this week’s release, director Nitesh Tiwari’s Chhichhore, we see a plumpy young hosteller run through his college hostel in underpants with a bucket of water in the middle of the night. Sexa (Varun Sharma), as the names suggests is a lecherous lad, who wakes up his friend, Anni (Sushant Singh Rajput) with a mischievous plan to drench the entire hostel. Soon, the entire hostel – H4 joins in, with kids pouring water on each other for fun! Its Holi in the middle of the night! This pretty much sets the tone of the 2-hours that are about to unfold in front of you. Chhichhore is writer-director Nitesh Tiwari’s ode to friendship and bonds made in college.

After watching the movie, I realised how college drama can be legitimately considered a genre of its own. They usually follow three common templates – college dramas centred around sports like Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar (1992), Student of the Year (2012) or love stories such as Dil (1990) and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1999) or the ones made around friendships in college like 3 Idiots (2009). But, Chhichhore falls between a sports drama and a movie on friendships. It is a heart-warming tale about friendship, eccentric hostellers in engineering colleges and how failure is not the end of the world.  While the movie is well-intended and wishes to make a point about the unnecessary pressure today’s kids go through to crack competitive exams, the message gets distorted in the din of the crazy antics of the 6 friends – the LOSERS!

Set in the 1990s in India’s best engineering college – National College of Technology, Mumbai (assuming it to be IIT-Bombay), Chhichhore is all about what happens outside the classrooms – ‘harmeless fun’ as Anni calls it. These are the crackling moments of the film filled with hilarious situations of seniors ragging their juniors, petty fights in the hostel and the scarcity of girls on an engineering college campus. Students even get rechristened with amusing pet names – the one who is always angry, toxic and abuses is ‘Acid’ (Naveen Polishetty), the momma’s pet is called ‘Mummy’ (Tushar Pandey) and the drunkard is called, well, ‘Bevda’ (Saharsh Kumar Shukla)! Since girls are scarce, a model-like girl is considered Halley’s comet – comes once in 75 years! And the comet here is Maya (Shraddha Kapoor), who chooses Anni among the hordes of boys that throw themselves at her.

The movie jumps between the past and the present, where the LOSERS are middle-aged people, who are reunited by a sudden unfortunate incident. Anni and Maya are married but estranged. The rest of the gang has aged with a receding hairline common between them and their equation and friendship intact as it was in college. And the reason for their bonding was not classrooms or general fun in the hostel. It was the college tournament – General Cup (deja vu of SOTY? Yes!), where the LOSERS of hostel H4 have always been at the bottom of the table. The writers cleverly use the General Cup (GC) to drive home the message that losing does not necessarily make one a loser.

The screenplay and editing of Chhichhore deserve the loudest applause. Instead of writing a linear narrative which has a single flashback portion woven into the present, the writers Nitesh Tiwari, Piyush Gupta and Nikhil Mehrotra use a complicated narrative that keeps switching between the past and the present, giving us a narrative which make both the timelines appear to be running in parallel. The writers also cleverly use the struggles and determination of the LOSERS to win GC as an analogy to a boy battling for his life. As I said, the intentions are noble, but the message isn’t driven home well. In 3 Idiots, the message was more pronounced – As Rancho says, ‘Success ke peeche mat bhaago, excellence ke peeche bhaago, success jhak maarke tumhare peeche aaegi’. We know that is the underlying theme of the movie. But Chhichhore falters in this aspect since the message is not as pronounced as I would have liked it to be.

The editing by Charu Shree Roy is perfect for such a convoluted narrative. For instance, see the magic of editing the sports sequences – we have a football, basketball and table tennis match intertwined and being played out for us in parallel, instead of showing each sport individually. The costumes and set design are also on point, recreating the 1990s perfectly well. The music, however, could have been better since there are no memorable numbers in the album. Also, the movie loses some steam post the interval but picks up soon, thankfully.

Another strength of the movie is the great performances from the entire cast. While Shraddha Kapoor as Maya, hardly seems to have aged in her older portions, she provides ample support as the lone girl among the bunch of boys. Tahir Raj Bhasin and Sushant Singh Rajput as Derek and Anni are good as the chief-and-his-deputy combo. Navin Polishetty seems to have a hangover of the ranting and angry characters he has played in his viral Youtube videos, yet, is delightful as the cussing Acid. But, it is Varun Sharma as Sexa, who steals the show. With naughtiness in his eyes and innocence in his antics, he is a treat to watch thanks to his brilliant comic timing. After Choocha in Fukrey, he played inconsequential sidekicks in other films, but finally gets to play a character that is as big as Choocha and honestly, more hilarious!

Chhichhore is a nostalgia-filled ride that uses a great premise to talk about the social pressure on kids today. While I was not completely convinced with it, the fact remains that the movie has its heart in the right place and thus, deserves a watch!

My Rating – 3/5