Student of the Year 2 Review - An Unnecessary Sequel That Never Lives Up To Its Predecessor.

In 1998, Karan Johar introduced us to the frothy, bubblegum universe in which Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) was set. We revelled at the plush college interiors, resembling Riverdale High from the Archie Comics. The extras looked like they’d walked out of a well-choreographed shampoo commercial. The clothes were neon, the energy electric and the textures plasticky. But Johar deftly combined this exterior facade with a strong emotional core - a trait that he repeated in two more films, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001) and Student of the Year (2012). Ironically, the sequel of the latter, directed by Punit Malhotra of I Hate Luv Storys (2010) and Gori Tere Pyaar Mein (2013) fame, fails to do the same.

The college in question, St. Teresa’s, looks like the background of a high school pop fantasy, but the screenplay is so hare-brained that it loses a distinctive trait. You’ll remember that in the first film, Karan ended by giving us a morality lesson on why competition can be unhealthy, and why St. T’s decided to discontinue the titular competition. So, Punit has an extra weight on his shoulders, to bring up a new template. He does, but it’s just silly. It revolves around the Dignity Cup, where 8 schools from the Dehradun-Mussoorie region compete to win. The winning team’s best player gets to win the eponymous award.

The rich kids all go to St. T’s. They drive Audis, drink lattes in cafeterias, and carry their books in designer handbags. Branded clothes are a given, but this feeling permeates the script, written poorly by Arshad Syed. The middle-class folks go to a school that resembles a khet. The principal can’t even finish her speech because the rats have nibbled away the mic wires. But, because this is the Dharma world, they still wear leather jackets, and are good folks who can afford to give a spoilt rich girl a birthday party that looks like it arose from a Tumblr-Pinterest morphed fantasy. It’s silly, but we buy into it, because while we ogle at the lives of the rich and famous, we get to see the cracks that are created, so we leave feeling morally superior.

But Punit isn’t Zoya Akhtar and this isn’t Dil Dhadakne Do (2015). You’ll recall Shefali Shah and Priyanka Chopra, being two strong and able-minded women who moulded the situations around them, while carrying around Gucci handbags and wearing the best clothes money could buy. Here, we get Ananya Pandey as a rebel without a cause, Shreya, and Tara Sutaria as a girl flooded with the idea of commerce. One despises money, the other lusts after it. In the hands of a more capable director-writer combo (including Karan and writer Niranjan Iyengar from the first film), this source material could’ve translated into a nice parody of Bollywood’s perception of colleges, with characters we could take home.

But all that goes right out of the window, when leading man Tiger Shroff comes into the picture. Tiger himself said about his character Rohan, “He’s like Superman stripped of his powers.” But, that’s also a lie. Because this is a Tiger vehicle, kicks, punches, flies, dances and moves with a poetic lyricism, almost like the shayar that Ayan (Ranbir Kapoor) was in another one of Johar’s films, Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. The biggest letdown here is that we get no fun supporting characters. From the old film, you’ll remember Dimpy and Jeet (who get a boring cameo in this one too), and Sudo. The best of them however were Ronit Roy as the Coach and Rishi Kapoor as Dean Yogendra Vashist, the closeted gay dean.

Here, Harsh Beniwal is the only one who makes sort of an impression, but these moments are fleeting and far in between. Punit is unable to create a mix between style and sentiment. The acting is uniformly sub-par. Ananya Pandey is the best of the lot. Her character, Shreya, is the only one that gets layers to her. We understand why she is the way she is. Though it’s clichéd and underdeveloped, there’s this one scene where Shreya stuffs her face with cake, that Ananya genuinely moves you. There is a genuine spark to Tara, but she’s hidden behind layers of makeup and designer Chanel. Her character, Mia, is so one-note, that the script entirely forgets about her. In the climax, she doesn’t even get closure because she doesn’t deserve it.

There are many such moments in Student of the Year 2, but Tiger Shroff and Aditya Seal carry it. Neither of them are good actors, they sneer a lot, having rousing monologues and rip off everything from High School Musical and its sequels (ironically) to Chak De India and Jo Jeeta Wahi Sikander. Their testosterone filled scenes are the only ones that inject this corny film with some bouts of realism. The action is well-choreographed, and Tiger is poetry-in-motion, but the script remains flaccid throughout. But, this is a nice universe, and this film is far from unwatchable. St. T’s was well-used in Karan's iconic SOTY, whose perception has drastically changed over the years from being a fully realised mid-life crisis, to one of his most self-aware films.

I hope Karan returns to Part 3, there’s a genuine spunk here, it just doesn’t manifest in Punit’s lesser hands.