Ravi K Chandran is stuck in a Bollywood time-warp. Like he is in the middle of framing a Karan Johar film hurriedly scripted by Rajkumar Santhoshi. And so nothing about Yaan should come as a surprise.
The hero, Chandru (Jiiva) and heroine Sreela (Thulasi Nair) are introduced in the middle of an absurdly choreographed action shoot-out to kill a dreaded Muslim terrorist.
Then there is a song. Glossy.
Then, there is another song. Also glossy.
All in ten minutes.
Rich, sleek Mumbai with its upmarket coffee pubs, expensive weddings and night clubs.
There, a rich spoilt boy with no job falls madly in love with a not-so rich and not-spoilt driving instructor. He tries to woo her. She wrinkles her nose in disapproval. “Porikki di, joker mathiri,” she tells her friend.
He strives to prove her right.
In a scene that’s too silly for words, she gives him her business card and he places it on his bike to dial the number. It slips off, flies over the basement and sits on a Sikh guy’s turban. Chandru runs after it as if his life depends on it. He pounces over cars, stops traffic.
The teenaged girl next to me smirks.
Yaan Video Songs
Then it happens again. I n s l o w m o t i o n.
It’s one of the funniest fight sequences in recent memory.
Except it wasn’t meant to be.
Their love story keeps cutting in and out. There is not a lot to relate to. Except there is scope to bring out the designer clothes, the sleek outdoors and very made-up heroines.
Sreela’s dad snubs Chandru for being unemployed. Her cousin – the token villain – wants to marry her.
Chandru pledges to prove himself, but gets into serious trouble. There are very faint shades of Gumraah, a clichéd caricature of a Muslim terrorist in the Middle East.
Recommended
There is no empathy with the characters.
Except for picture perfect visuals, there is hardly anything memorable about this film. One can’t think of a single memorable song or line or performance, even though there was a solid technical team to back up the director: Sabu Cyril doing art and Sreekar Prasad as the editor.
There was one moment when the theatre clapped in glee. Sreela is watching TV and we get a glimpse of Ajith sliding down an escalator from Aarambham.
The Yaan Review is a Silverscreen original article. It was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the movie. Silverscreen.in and its writers do not have an advertising relationship with movies that are reviewed on the site.