Ken Karunaas plays an underachieving schoolgoer. He spends his time with friends, and trying to make girls fall for him. These portions are okayish. But once the protagonist’s parents begin to play a bigger role, the film picks up, and has a strong, emotional finish. Even the message at the end is nicely done. That’s the short take. A longer review follows and it may contain spoilers.
While promoting his debut film as a director, Ken Karunaas said that he was aiming for the vibe of a Premalu or an Attakathi. But starting with the title that echoes a Vijay film, Youth is very much in the regular mainstream zone. Those other movies were special because they broke the mould in terms of storytelling. Youth, however, is happy being a… “template movie”. The story is about a schoolgoer named Praveen. Ken plays this character perfectly, and as director, he has chosen Praveen’s parents perfectly. Devadarshini and Suraj Venjaramoodu balance the slight OTT flavour we like in Tamil mainstream performances without losing a grip on their characters and making them caricatures. The mother dotes on Praveen. The father, who runs a bakery, has an uneasy relationship with the boy. The meat of the movie is in this parent-child relationship, but Ken goes the template way. He fills the first half with fun times in school, falling in love, and so forth. Then, we get the explosive interval point. The second half becomes more serious, and the last half-hour contains the movie’s message.
But even among template movies, there are good ones and middling ones and bad ones – and Youth is mostly between good and middling. Some of the love portions are too generic. But the bits where Praveen gets sent out of class for making trouble and falls for a troublemaker from the neighbouring class – this school-corridor semi-romance is sweetly done. Ken also wrote the film, and he has a way of being commercial without being too clichéd. The small payoffs – from, say, Praveen’s father talking about the girl he liked – come off really well. Whatever Youth does, it’s very clean. There’s no clutter in the screenplay. The film does not try to do too much. It knows where it is going, and it gets there by sticking to the template and yet finding small ways to do something new – like the portion where Praveen’s parents are ignored by a rich relative. The writing is basic, but the point gets across strongly. We know the father will do anything for the mother. And we know what the father thinks, sometimes, when he looks at his wife and their very middle-class existence.
GV Prakash Kumar’s ‘Mutta kalakki’ is a chartbuster, but I wished the songs had been shot more distinctively. But as far as the drama is concerned, the second half gets progressively better. Anishma Anilkumar, who we recently saw in Sirai, plays the friend and sort-of love interest who brings about a realisation in Praveen. She’s the catalyst for his coming of age. But the bigger realisation in Praveen comes from his father. Maybe it’s a guy thing, but there’s something very emotional and irresistible about the father-son bond, which is filled with male ego and competitiveness and also with the fear that the son may end up making the same mistakes the father did. This final stretch works very well. The emotions land well, and the dialogues get the job done. They are simple and strong, and it feels like the protagonist is having a moment and not like the director is preaching to us. And that’s all we ask for in a template movie, of which Youth is a solid example.
