Nadaaniyan: A Missed Chance To Explore Young Adult Life, Falls Into Predictability

Pretty, rich kids who go to good schools, wear expensive clothes and fall in love is a pretty boring story. Nadaaniyan on Netflix is not relatable at all. The dramedy is immature. The problem is that the narrative itself is kiddish. It's superficial, hence Nadaaniyan does not live up to expectations. The romance plot tests patience and credibility, mirroring the armchair sensibility of the Bandra school of cinema. The cultural context of Delhi-NCR and its fuzzy educational ideas are infuriating. Furthermore, using stock characters to plough a dated plot always results in poor returns.

The Premise 

• The plot centres on wealthy Pia (Khushi Kapoor), who deals with her problems while putting on a front and interacting with the outside world. Ibrahim Ali Khan's character Arjun is career-oriented and doesn't want any "distractions."After a misunderstanding with her friends, she convinces Arjun to be her boyfriend in exchange for money. Emotions get in the way as this is bound to happen and the tale dies before it reaches its conclusion. 

The Frivolous Take on Patriarchy and Young Adult Issues 

The script becomes a paragraph-negotiation drill on parenting and the emotional turbulence that comes with teenagers on the verge of adulthood as tensions arise. Ivy League references are made continually without any substantial depth and the observation regarding patriarchal nuances within affluent families remains superficial. The wisecracks fail. In a few places, I even felt that the director was going out of their way to make adultery normal in the character of Suniel Shetty, Pia's (Khushi Kapoor) father. Moreover, it is extremely unnecessary, old-fashioned, and unrealistic to still show Pia’s mother trying for a boy to be the torchbearer of the family’s legacy in today’s world, the trope serves to be redundant. 

Honestly, the entire tale of a rich girl falling in love with a middle-class boy is sad and very boring. You don't even need to see the full movie to know how it ends and what happens next because it is so incredibly predictable. Today's viewers have changed due to their exposure to movies and no one deserves to live through so such an insipid, boring, and lackadaisical love affair. In this portrayal of young adults, where's the intensity? Tell me, please, where's the depth? In addition, how do the 12th-graders get the time to cultivate such perfectly chiselled physiques? As for me, I believe Netflix's Nadaaniyan was a terrible and cringeworthy film for the current audience. As the title of the movie suggests, the plot is stupid, ignorant, and dumb—traits that are rare among children today, particularly in the highly competitive world of today.

Underutilised potential of the stellar cast and half-baked screenplay

Ishita Moitra, Riva Razdan Kapoor, and Jehan Handa's screenplay just doesn't work. When Ibrahim's character, following a very childish speech, lifts his T-shirt and flaunts his abs to win the position of president of his school's debating society, the hope that one had is snuffed out. This tone-deaf portrayal of school life is not hip or funny.

Nadaaniyan's world is a bubble, isolated from the rest of the world. One where it is embarrassing to be from "Noida"—er, "Greater Noida."

Small things are dramatized to the point of being catastrophic. Arjun's parents played by Jugal Hansraj and Dia Mirza and Suniel Shetty who plays Pia’s father are extremely untapped to their tremendous acting potential. Archana Puran Singh plays the role of Mrs Braganza Malhotra likened to her role in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. This clearly shows how desperate today's filmmakers are to generate a sense of nostalgia to make as many viewers as possible.

Since she has a harder character journey and needs to navigate through a toxic family environment, Khushi Kapoor performs a little better. She acts well in emotional scenes, but she needs to be more subtle in how she delivers her lines. Ibrahim tries valiantly to save the film at least, but fails. He just needs guidance from a master craftsman; he possesses potential, the good looks of his dad, and a body to kill for.

This foppery extravaganza has an X factor somewhere hidden, but as of now for Nadaaniyan, it is imperceptible. The most plausible aspect of Nadaaniyan is that released on OTT and didn't turn out to be a big-screen affair. It ends, which is a plus. Romances, which were Bollywood's strength, are reduced to this fiasco and it is unacceptable now.

Views expressed by the author are their own.