Yuva Review: A Cluttered Entertainer That's Engaging Only In Parts

Director: Santhosh Ananddram

Cast: Yuva Rajkumar, Sapthami Gowda, Achyuth Kumar, Sudharani, Kishore

Duration: 153 minutes

Available in: Theatres

In Yuva, writer-director Santhosh Ananddram abruptly jumps from one idea to another and ends up delivering a film that's too ambitious for its own good. From university gang wars, sports politics, and romance arcs to dysfunctional father-son dynamics, the film wades through an excessive number of plotlines and fails to realise the true potential of any of them. At the heart of it all is a coming-of-age story which suffers the most because of the highly distracted narrative. 

Yuvaraj, or Yuva, is a stoic yet hot-blooded engineering student who wields the power and the might to thrash at least a couple of thugs before the blink of an eye. These traits of his come in quite handy when he finds himself at the centre of a regional 'local vs hostellers' conflict in Mangaluru, where he becomes the face of the latter side. But, of course, there's a lot more to our guy and what Santhosh Ananddram, to his credit, does well is he unpeels his central character at a controlled pace. Yuva isn't just any fly-off-the-handle hero who has unmeasured anger — he is also a son to a middle-class father who must look beyond his flaring nose to understand the true reality of his family.

So, what Ananddram does is he renders the first half almost entirely as a huge fan service. The action sequences are staged decently and the energy is retained high throughout, with his trademark dialogues (though a tad too verbose and out-of-place) eliciting some excitement among the viewer. We are also introduced to the romance angle in the story, featuring a grossly under-utilised Sapthami Gowda, and a semblance of a 'mass' entertainer slowly forms itself in front of us. In fact, one might notice the tone and treatment to be starkly similar to the director's own Yuvaratnaa (2021), which concerned a college and the education system at large.

But the film then switches gears and starts to bear a completely different face. All the mayhem, all the over-the-top action, the gangsters, the good vs bad, the general heavy stakes — they evaporate and we are now dealing with a family drama. Yuva's father, as it turns out, has put himself and his family in a lot of financial trouble and the hero must shed his unwarranted machismo to pull everyone out of that mess. His rage must make way for responsibility and his arrogance for humility. In short, he must realise his true potential after this humbling experience.

I suppose, this portion carries the essence of the film that Santhosh Ananddram actually wanted to make. The writing in the second half has a finer nuance to it (although it stays quite pronounced throughout) and the conviction is apparent; more importantly, we get to see Yuva Rajkumar being challenged as an actor here. The debutant, touted as the third-generation box office superstar from the Dr. Rajkumar family, pulls off the action sequences with a lot of finesse and looks at ease. However, it's the more dramatic sequences that confront him harder and he fares to a middling effect. The decision, either of the director or the actor himself, to remain undemonstrative throughout, has its pros and cons but one would have certainly liked to have seen Yuva Rajkumar be at a lot more ease as a performer.

Yet, his scenes with Achyuth Kumar (his on-screen father) are engaging and could well regarded as the highlight of the film. The seasoned actor is given an interesting role to play and he portrays the character with control, even though his arc has a lot of incoherence about it. Gopal Deshpande, Hitha Chandrashekar, Sudha Rani and a few others, too, chip in with adequate performances. Ajaneesh B. Loknath's music, though, is a bit of a letdown.

The latter half of the film also reminded me of Suseenthiran's Naan Mahaan Alla (2010), starring Karthi and Jayaprakash. There, unlike in Yuva, the father-son relationship exists under congenial and endearing terms but the journey of the protagonist remains similar in both films. Both characters too are forced to metamorphosize into more secure and dependable involving following personal debacles, but the Tamil film emerges as a lot more effective in showcasing this because of its focus. Yuva, as a consequence of taking on way too much (unnecessarily), becomes a hotchpotch of ideas that don't really serve the central idea. 

The main peeve, among the many, is the inclusion of a sports-drama angle which is back-burnered until the very end. Except that this particular bit is meant to round off the narrative and give us the closure it needs. The ever-reliable Kishore is handed the task of essaying Yuva's wrestling coach and there is another subordinate plot involving a scam that gets the two banned. In any film worth its salt, this particular segment would have been treated with a lot more significance considering the bearing it has on the climax of the film. But in Yuva, the haste in the writing doesn't give us the fitting payoff we had been keen on. Yuva is an interesting film and has many memorable moments to its name, but the film is definitely not greater than the sum of its parts.