Movie Review: Wake Up Sid

Irrespective of the title not really a review, reflections 🙂

There are some movies, that by looking at its stills you can tell with certainty that you are going to watch it.  It is distinctly a whimsy feeling considering you watch all other movies after carefully vetting the reviews. 🙂 Wake Up Sid was one such movie for me. I knew I had to watch it.

God knows how many times I have given in to such feelings and been mortified at my own judgment. I still have a stark memory of buying advance tickets of a Hrithik Movie Yaadein. (After the first hit, Hrithik’s this second movie had so many takers in advance bookings.) I stood for more than two hours (there was a lunch break in between) in an agonizingly long queue for the tickets at Delhi’s Chanakya theater (It has been closed down now) with my friends. Needless to say, once inside in the theater during the screening of Yaadein, my friends cursed me for that excruciating effort we made to buy the tickets for them.

My reviews aren’t meant to be professional, I mean to ramble and reflect. The experience. And Wake Up Sid gave me a wonderful experience.

This is the first time I am going to rave about a movie that has hardly a plot to talk about. Plot is always important to me when it concerns a book or a movie. And Wake Up Sid has none.

Possible Spoiler: It’s simple of story of a college kid drifting through ‘I-don’t-know-what-I’m-gonna-do’ phase combined with ‘We-don’t-know-we’re-in-love’ twist. :Possible Spoiler That’s it. That is the story.

Yet movie enthralled me, consumed me. For once, nothing was over-the-top or melodramatic. Yet it touched heart. (It helped my friends discreetly let me be weepy at times. 🙂 ) In the movie, college kids looked like college kids. Sweet friendships, puppy loves and camaraderie. The age when friends make your world go around. You have conflicts with a family you know you love.

And finally not knowing what you are good at. It happens to all of us. I have drifted and veered courses too. I have taken longer time than Sid to decide how I wanted to earn my living. I just knew that I wanted to do something that I love, so that it would not seem like I am working (and that enjoying made half the work done). I am glad I made it and it came by a small quirk of fate. For Sid, he simply drifted through it with some aid from a ‘friend’.

Movie works because it works on a basic rule, “Don’t tell me, show me.”

There are so many moments I can recount where there were no dialogues but gestures, feelings that were communicated to you. Possible Spoiler: Like a friend gently dissuading obese friend from eating, laughing off first heartbreak in an attempt to lighten up, father embarrassed at his son’s drifting ways, a doting Mom trying to catch her son’s attention, a woman realising that she has fallen in love, irrational sweet jealousy, a woman realising that the man she’s interested is taken and a boy wanting to please a woman he doesn’t know that he loves. : Possible Spoiler

Each actor was great. Konkana Sen Sharma has always played the character of an independent girl with a hilt. Its again that yet it doesn’t feel clichéd or repetitive. Ranbir Kapoor, as my friend kept reminding looked a spitting image of his mother Neetu Singh, was great as Sid. If this isn’t a consummate performance, then nothing else is. Full marks to both Ranbir and Konkana and unstated chemistry.

Handsome Rahul Khanna who was not half as handsome as he usually is, was also there as Konkana’s crush. Both Anupam Kher and Supriya Pathak (more Anupam though) as Sid’s parents were understated and subtle.

Ranbir Kapoor with Director Ayan Mukherjee

Subtle is also the word for this movie by the young director Ayan Mukherjee. Go watch this movie, it will remind you many young bitter-sweet moments of your love and life.

Rating: 4/5 (It has both heart and spirit so bonus points; if it had a story I would give it a high 5)

P.S: Possible Spoiler: Konkana’s article “New Girl in Bombay” for the mag was certainly not at all a masterpiece but it was sweet, though I loved Ranbir’s repartee (to it) more.

This is your new girl in Pune, signing off. 🙂