Rahul Desai
It’s a little disorienting to watch an Indian high-school drama that has no murder, sex, drugs, violence, abuse, class rage and general depravity. But Friday Night Plan, directed by Vatsal Neelakantan, is that rare streaming-era film.
In Friday Night Plan, sibling revelry shapes the highs and lows of a SoBo party. Eighteen-year-old senior Sid Menon (Babil Khan) and younger brother Adi (Amrith Jayan) paint the town green when their mother (Juhi Chawla) goes away on a business trip.
In a way, this is a children’s movie disguised as a young-adult tale. It doesn’t judge characters that are routinely written as empty stereotypes. The cop is not as evil as we imagine; it’s just a slow night for him.
The flipside of the film’s virginal debauchery (no smoking, no swear words, no selfies) is that it sacrifices cultural punch at the altar of family-friendly fun. It refuses to cross a moral line. The staging is visible.
I wouldn’t have thought the same a decade ago, but maybe a frothy vanilla shake on a breezy afternoon is what they call a “guilty pleasure”. Maybe, it’s the perfect hangover cure after a night of binge-watching decadence.