Watching Chhichhore yesterday I cried a bit, laughed a bit and come out of the theatre not regretting the two and a half hours I had just spent. This movie is Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander but not as cute; it is 3 Idiots but not as funny or smart. The movie is about the reunion and reminiscing of old hostel-mates and rests on a rather flimsy premise. That said, it is still very watchable and quite touching in parts.
Most of the widely followed critics have liked the film and given it a rating of 3 and above. The portrayal of college life in the film is realistic and seems to draw on the personal IIT experiences of director Nitesh Tiwari.
The bonds we form in our youth stay strong for a lifetime. Real friends are forever. Never give up. These are some of the themes that the film explores.
The film is sweet and it is entertaining. The characters are engaging and identifiable and one leaves the theatre feeling good and satisfied.
Yes it has a few expletives but is family fare for the most part. The bond between the father and son, the divorced husband and wife are all skillfully done and believable.
The movie is well received by audiences as well as reviewers and according to reports seems to be doing good business at the box office. With so many negative reactions to Saaho (which incidentally I thought was awful and walked out of after the interval), people seem more favourably inclined towards Chhichhore.
Some thought that the film was poor mishmash of 3 Idiots and SOTY/SOTY2. While there was none of the glamour of the SOTY films in Chhichhore, there were similarities. No one seemed to attend classes or do any studying for one. All the attention of the students was on something called the GC, a two month long sports tournament which the ‘losers’ or Hostel No 4 were determined to win – in order to shed that very ‘losers’ tag.
We see the same hostel mates 20 years later and they all have receding hairlines and quite dreadful wigs. The unnatural-looking wigs were distracting me from the narrative.
Chhichhore is highly watchable, but not without its flaws. The reason for the ‘Losers’ reuniting after 20 years and for five professionals putting their entire lives on hold indefinitely is not entirely convincing. While Sushant Singh Rajput as Annirudh aka Anni and Shraddha Kapoor as Maya are very cute as their younger selves, we don’t quite get to understand what went wrong in that relationship. Varun Sharma as Gurmeet Singh Dhillon aka Sexa, Tahir Raj Bhasin as Derek, Naveen Polishetty as Acid, Tushar Pandey as Sundar "Mummy" and Saharsh Kumar Shukla as Bevda – the other ‘losers’ are uni-dimensional characters and have no backstory. The movie’s conflict is unconvincing and the resolutions altogether too pat. That said, Chhichhore is a movie well worth the watch – it is sweet, funny, emotional and a lovely ode to friendships that never die.
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