Saiyaara Review | A Typical Mohit Suri Romantic Drama With a Surprisingly Solid Lead Pair

When the ticket sales started, Saiyaara sprung a surprise on everyone by selling out very quickly, and there were even late-night shows getting added in main cities to accommodate the booking demand. When it comes to this movie by Mohit Suri, the story is not offering any major surprises, and in fact, most of the beats in this movie are similar to Aashiqui 2, and even the treatment has that classic Mohit Suri approach of creating a catchy line similar to Aashiqui’s “Kuch Nahi.. Bas yuhi..” If you are someone who feels that Mohit Suri’s other memorable movies have aged well over the years, then Saiyaara might feel phenomenal for you. If you belong to the other category, who might feel some of it as ultra cheesy or over-romanticized, it will be the conviction in the performance of the lead duo that will make you sit through this movie.

Krish Kapoor is an aspiring lead singer of a band who wants to make it big in life and earn a lot of money. During his struggle to gain a name, he happens to meet this girl named Vaani Batra, whose diary he saw, and felt that she could really help him in writing lyrics for his songs. What we see in this movie is the development of this professional relationship into a deeply personal one and how some unfortunate events cause trouble in it.

This was a story by Sankalp Sadanah, a long-time associate of Mohit Suri, developed in order to make a spiritual sequel to Aashiqui 2. And when you look at the musical backdrop of the movie and the turbulence in the relationship due to various factors, you can see that it is that restructured version of A Star is Born. You have the same old love story of a man-child-like hero meeting a simple and naive girl. Coupled with Suri’s style of filmy lines about the idea of love, the movie is able to create some good moments. In the second half, there were areas where you would feel the film might opt for something drastically different from the usual. But eventually it is coming back to that classical formula.

I wouldn’t say the script is the only thing that is saving this movie. Because the kind of lines Mohit Suri likes in his movies requires performances with a certain level of conviction to make us feel for those characters. The real surprise comes in the form of new talents Ahaan Panday and Aneet Padda, who were able to achieve that. Ahaan, in the initial bits of the movie where he has to act like this raging hero, is a bit uneven. But I liked him in the second half of the film, where the character was more composed. For me, the real find of this movie is Aneet Padda. There is one dialogue in the film where she sort of scolds the hero for not creating a space to write something good. It is that highly theatrical, lengthy dialogue that even the experienced ones can mess up. However, Aneet handles such moments with a surprising level of control, and it contributes to the movie being engaging. Alam Khan plays the role of the friend/agent of the hero.

The treatment of the movie is in that typical Mohit Suri style. We have these beauty shots for the heroine, and the moment the lead pair meet for the first time is in the most cinematic style with slow-motion and stuff. The music in the movie is extremely good, with Suri sticking to his style of songs, focusing fully on the painful and hope-infusing romance. There are jibes in the film taken at T-Series for their obsession with ruining original thoughts by mixing rap and stuff to make music trending. The single-shot second intro of the hero, where he performs a full song without the help of his band, was staged in a very authentic manner. Towards the latter parts of the movie, it becomes a melodramatic tale of relentless love, and the payoffs we see through dialogues are kind of obvious.

Looking at the current state of Bollywood, where filmmakers are clueless about what to make and end up creating sequels or replicas of the successful movies of the south, I would say the success of Saiyaara can work as a wake up call to go back to the kind of stories and story telling Hindi films were known for and reinventing them for a new age audience. Saiyaara, on the whole, is that signature Mohit Suri flick that dodged the possible melodramatic overdose with the help of its surprisingly good lead pair.