UVAA, Review: Yuvanile delinquents

It pains you when an apparently well-intentioned film, made with limited resources, pads it up with trivia and inconsequential trappings, thereby relegating the very issue it set out to highlight. UVAA is good example of undisciplined writing and inconsistent direction, which makes smart moves off and on, only to hit new lows regularly.

The film is a tale of five teenage friends who are constantly up to mischief and pranks, sometimes of a serious nature, but always ready to stand by each other. They are hated by most of the school staff and teachers, but the Principal sees some good in them. One day, three of them, on a late night stroll, taking a break from group study for the oncoming exam, see a young woman being thrown out of an SUV. The woman, who has been brutally gang-raped, is in a critical condition, and the boys rush her to hospital. There, she goes into a coma. Soon, the boys discover that the woman is their Principal’s older daughter. The Principal himself, an upright man, is reluctant to make it a police case, out of shame, but the boys are determined to bring the rapists to book. He finally gives in and files an F.I.R. The boys’ girl classmate’s mother, an advocate, agrees to pursue the matter in court, but they are unaware of the lengths to which the boys’ (all three are brothers) father will go to buy his sons’ freedom, and turn the tables on the prosecution case.

UVAA is a phonetic variation of Yuva, which means youth in Hindi. There was a film made in 2004 called Yuva, so is copyright the reason for this aberration in spelling? While this film was being shot last year, news reports mentioned its name as Yuva. Never mind! Call a disappointing film by any name, it will still disappoint. Described by the director on his LinkedIn page as a ‘romantic comedy’, it is a coming of age school caper that metamorphoses into a treatise on the right punishment for rapists. There is a dash of comedy in the school scenes, mainly involving teachers who are more caricatures than practitioners of the noblest profession. UVAA gets into some serious confrontation in the courtroom scenes, too late to bring the derailed youth express back on track.

Director and story-writer Jasbir B. Bhaati (TV serials director since 2004, around 4,000 episodes so far) has looked in many directions for inspiration, including the Nirbhaya gory gang-rape case that rocked Delhi some time ago, yet ended-up failing to put together a coherent narrative. The first half is terribly indulgent, where a group of boys, appearing to be in the age group of 18-24 (one has a baby-face, to be sure), sing, dance, and play violent pranks. It becomes worse when the patriarch (the grand-father of one of the boys), a patriot who lost his only son in the Kargil war with Pakistan, is shell-shocked when he learns of their misdeeds and lodges the five delinquents in Aravalli school, near Surajkund (the film was also shot in Delhi, Greater Noida and a village on the outskirts of Agra). Here, the screenplay and dialogue writers of the film, Dharmendra V. Singh, Shailendra Tiwari, Bhupendra Singh “Megh”, struggle to infuse some humour, but end up playing with Hindi and Urdu language based proverbs that should have been part of the 5^th standard syllabus, not the 10^th (we presume the students have to be in the 10^th, from their looks) and some age-old teacher’s crush on teacher ploys. English language is also brought into the equation, to leverage some cross lingual laughs.

One problem is that of far too many characters. Five lead boys, five more girls, teachers, Principal, his daughters, parents, a grandfather, policemen, lawyers, judge, rapists, their father… the list is really long. So is the film. We can salvage just about 23 minutes of meritorious stuff from the goings-on, and it is no co-incidence that most TV serials in India are made in 23 minute formats. Bhaati, obviously, has yet to grow out of the TV serial mould.

Along with a largely unknown cast, UVAA has some veterans too on screen. Jimmy Shergil plays a Superintendent of Police, in his typical ‘strong-man with a dead-pan, hard-nosed look’ style. Om Puri (grandfather) survives a few pitfalls and even manages to strike a chord towards the end. Rajit Kapoor (Principal) is a good actor in a role that makes him ham too often. Initial scenes featuring Archana Puran Singh (advocate) appear to have been shot in a hurry. In the court, her character starts confidently, but suddenly slips into incompetence. The proverb-touting Hindi teacher, Batuk Nath Vyakul, is played by Sanjay Mishra, who gets to tap only a modicum of his talent. Pariskshit Sahni as the judge is restrained, till he is led into a real filmy climax.

As the infamous five, Vikrant Rai (Ram Pratap Choudhary),  Lavin R. Gothi (Vikram Tyagi/VT), Mohit Baghel (Salman Khan), Bhupendra Singh “Megh” (Deen Bandhu) and Rohan Mehra (Anil Sharma) go through the grind. Fair sex representatives include Yukti Kapoor, Vinti Idnani, Poonam Pandey, Sheena Bajaj, Vradhhi Sharma and Neha Khan. Manish Chaudhari is okay as the defence counsel, Elena Kazan shows more style than substance as the English teacher and Jitu Shivhare (Gadha Prasad of the popular, long-running TV series Chidiya Ghar, currently on air) does pretty little to alleviate the lack-lustre tale. Sangram Singh (real-life wrestler-turned-actor) is cast as sports coach Sangram Singh, who mutters inane dialogue and shows bulging biceps. He also has a lady teacher (Shefali Singh) swooning and falling into his arms at the drop of a hat.

A couple of the frenetically edited songs are well-tuned and well choreographed, and some of Bhupendra Singh Megh’s lines are inspired.

(For many years, this critic has been thinking about a highly deterrent punishment for rape. Little did he know that a film called UVAA would advocate and incorporate the very same penalty).

Rating: *1/2

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9vnNUFlblc