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
