Wake Up Sid

Director: Ayan Mukherjee

Rating:***

Siddharth Mehra is a good-looking,rich lay-about. He drives his father’s expensive cars,flashes plastic at designer stores,and works very hard at partying. The future is very far away ; today is all there is,and it’s all about having fun. Aisha Banerjee,new arrival in Mumbai,is everything he’s not : she wants to do something,be something,on her own her steam.

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‘Lassoo’ lad,driven lass : Ayan Mukherjee’s debut feature has opposites Ranbir and Konkona attracting in a setting which is borrowed straight out of his producer Karan Johar’s idiom. Stylish décor,zippy lines,and well-dressed people living in Bombay not Mumbai,speaking Hindi which sounds like English : ‘isse zyada achcha aur kya ho sakta hai’,says the cool editor of a cool city magazine after a jazz riff is over,and you can almost hear the ‘what could be better than this’ underneath.

You fear for unlikely couple Ranbir and Konkona,because when they meet,it’s not cute enough: she’s older and he’s younger ( she keeps calling him a ‘bachcha’),and they are much too fraternal for their own good,even when they share the same bed. Individually,both do well. Ranbir is effortlessly charming as the lazy dude with a heart,and Konkona rises a little out of her usual grid. She reads Murakami,he skims through comics,and the twain do not look made for each other. ‘Wake Up Sid’ succeeds only partly in being a sweet rom com : the false starts,and the too-long period of being ‘just good friends’ feels real,but you wish there was more going on between the friends-who-turn-into-lovers. Sid and Aisha spark,but only towards the end of the film.

The stand-out part of the film is the supporting cast. The friends that Sid hangs out with are well drawn : the emotional guy ( Namit) who wants to propose to his girl-friend,the fat girl ( Shikha) who makes light of her weight. There’s Anupam Kher and Supriya Pathak being the spoilt brat’s loving-but-stern dad-and-mom : you marvel at Anupam’s ability to play dad in every other film with just that little bit of difference.

Despite the obvious passages,Mukherjee shows he has a way of adding nuance to a scene. ‘Wake Up Sid’ is a promising first effort.