The best audience reaction this film could get happened at the show I watched in Mumbai. The hall was filled with students of Whistling Woods. Almost 20 to 30 of them, they were proudly displaying their Whistling Woods Academy t-shirt.
The credits started rolling and the students started applauding. Subhash Ghai’s credit got the highest cheer. Then came the interval and I heard someone say. “ yaar apne apne t-shirts uthar ke chupalao”.
Yuvraaj is a tale of three brothers. Gyanesh (Anil Kapoor),Deven ( Salman Khan) & Dyanesh ( Zayed Khan). Deven was thrown out of the house at a very young age, Gyanesh is autistic. Dyanesh is a spoilt brat. Deven stays in Prague working as a chorus singer in the troupe where Katrina is a cellist. After the death of his father Deven lands in London to stake his claim over his dad’s wealth but the entire wealth is in the name of Gyanesh so Deven & Dyanesh hatch a plan as partners not brothers( A line which is repeated by them at least 5 times in the film) to claim their share over the wealth. What happens next is what Yuvraaj is all about.
According to me the last truly Subhash Ghai film was Khalnayak. After that he lost the plot. He got stuck in a situation where with every film he tries to wrap a new packaging to the same old formula. With this film he achieves his hat trick of disasters. Yaadein & Kisna are the other two films. Yuvraaj is a perfect example of a bad screenplay. There is nothing which holds your attention. It is designed as a musical but is not a musical. Mr. Ghai gets it right only in the last few minutes of the climax. A filmmaker who has worked with Madhuri Dixit has to bow down to the dictum of commercial cinema and work with Katrina Kaif. Even after doing 14 films Katrina can’t act saala. Salman khan is in his own world like being on a paid holiday. Zayed Khan proves yet again that he can’t act for nuts. Boman Irani gives his worst performance ever. The only actor who tries to be sane in this insane enterprise is Anil Kapoor but to watch a similar & better performance of Anil Kapoor watch Eeshwar. The art direction is just a showreel of Omung Kumar to showcase what he can deliver, the cinematography doesn’t do justice to the locales. Kabir Lal is the most over rated cinematographer in the industry. To top it all the story, dialogues & editing is done by the Subhash the Ghai. This is the biggest trap which he has got himself into of being so full of himself. I am confident that if he finds himself some new writers, a good editor & stop himself from being the jack of all trades he can still deliver a pretty decent film. I have grown up watching Subhash Ghai’s film & it pains to see him make films like Yuvraaj. There are 10 Subhash Ghai films out of the 18 he has directed which I love & I am willing to watch them all over again than sit through Yuvraaj.
Final few words: Subhash Ghai should be whistling in his woods instead of making a film. Coming back to his students, after the film ended all the whistling woods student waited for everyone to get out of the auditorium then I heard a voice say “ sab chale gaye, abhi hum log yahan se nikal sakte hai” my worst fear is that the first batch of graduates from his institute are out. I hope they have not taken his recent works & words seriously.
*½(Bad)
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