Yuvvraaj
Synopsis:
Picture this, about halfway through Yuvvraaj, Salman Khan is literally singing an opera song in a massive concert hall in Austria while wearing a turtleneck that costs more than my rent, and he's totally losing his mind because his estranged brothers are messing up his master plan to steal an inheritance. But to understand why any of this is happening, you have to look at how this whole messy family drama actually started, which involves a dying billionaire patriarch named Yogendra Yuvvraaj who leaves behind a video will that's basically designed to pit his three sons against each other in the most toxic way possible. Deven, played by Salman, is the oldest and he's this brooding, angry, struggling composer who's deeply bitter because his dad wouldn't let him marry the love of his life, Anushka, because she wasn't rich enough, and now he has to figure out how to get a piece of that massive family fortune. Anushka is played by Katrina Kaif, and let me tell you, she spends a solid twenty minutes of screen time just walking through art galleries in these ridiculously elaborate, flowing white dresses that look completely impractical for walking on cobblestones, and there's this one specific scene where she's holding a very tiny, excessively fluffy white Pomeranian dog that barks aggressively at nothing while she argues with Salman about a contract written on a paper napkin at a very fancy outdoor cafe where nobody is actually eating any food. Anyway, the dad kicks the bucket and the lawyers gather the brothers together to read the bizarre will.
So then the will reveals that the entire estate goes to the mentally unstable younger brother, Danny, who is played by Anil Kapoor in a performance that can only be described as completely unhinged because he's running around a massive mansion shouting gibberish and playing with toy trains, and honestly Anil Kapoor steals every single scene he's in just by making these weird wide-eyed faces. The third brother is Yuvraj, played by Zayed Khan, who is this pampered, fast-car-driving playboy who cares about nothing except partying and spending his dad's money. Deven realizes that if Danny is legally incompetent, he needs to be declared of sound mind, or else the greedy stepmother and her slimy lawyer, played by Boman Irani wearing the most punchable pair of wire-rimmed glasses you've ever seen, are going to take every single penny. So Deven hatches a plan to bring Danny back to normal by reuniting him with his childhood sweetheart, and they go on this whole emotional trip to Prague or wherever.
Right after that, they start singing songs in the snow, because this is peak classic bollywood style we're talking about, and bollywood movies in this era just loved putting people in heavy winter coats in the middle of a glacier for no narrative reason whatsoever. The brothers start bonding through music, which makes sense since the whole movie is basically structured around classical compositions and choir music, and Deven teaches Danny how to play the piano properly while screaming tu meri dost hai across a grand room. Boman Irani's character keeps popping up to try and ruin everything by bribing doctors and forging documents, but nobody cares about the corporate espionage subplot because we're all just waiting for the next musical number where Katrina Kaif dances ballet in a red room. The family dynamics get super messy with endless shouting matches and dramatic slaps and people storming out of giant wooden double doors. It gets complicated.
The funny thing is, out of all the massive hindi movies that came out that year, this one really leaned hard into the whole orchestral drama vibe, and hindi films usually love a good family reconciliation trope, but this one has Salman Khan conducting an entire symphony orchestra just to prove a point to his dead dad. Danny finally gets his act together and speaks a full sentence without shaking, which legally ruins the stepmother's evil plan to steal the trust fund. Everyone hugs it out in a massive white marble living room while the sun sets behind them. Salman and Katrina get back together. Salman walks over to the giant golden piano, sits down on the velvet bench, presses the lowest bass key, and slams the lid shut.
The coat Salman Khan wears in the first fifteen minutes of Yuvvraaj has too many buttons, and every time he turns sideways, the heavy wool catches the stage lighting in a way that makes the entire shoulder seam look like it was basted together with grey upholstery thread from a hardware store.
Subhash Ghai used to run an empire on the back of sprawling family melodramas where the patriarch sat in a massive leather armchair and shouted at three sons who all wanted different pieces of a vast estate, but by 2008 the gears were rusted and the sound design had gone loud and brittle. Anil Kapoor plays the mentally challenged older brother named Deven with the kind of intense, eye-rolling physicality that makes you long for the quieter, more grounded restraint of his work in Lamhe, though here he is mostly tasked with screaming opera lyrics and holding a conductor's baton while standing in front of oversized Renaissance paintings that look like they were printed on vinyl banners for a suburban trade show.
The screenplay is a messy adaptation of King Lear filtered through a soap opera where the money is always missing and nobody ever sits down without launching into a forty-minute monologue about property rights and parental betrayal. Salman Khan plays Deven's younger half-brother Gyan, an aspiring musician who hates his dying father so much he refuses to cry at the funeral, which is fair enough given the old man spent his final decades being played by Boman Irani with a grey wig that shifts half an inch to the left every time he has a coughing fit.
Katrina Kaif shows up as Anushka, a cellist who wears very expensive white coats and stands by large windows while looking slightly confused by the heavy dialogue, though she hits her marks with a pleasant, glossy efficiency that gets the job done without ever threatening to become actual acting. The camera loves her face and lingers on it for four or five seconds after every dramatic exchange has ended, which creates this strange dead air in the editing room where you can practically hear the projectionist checking his watch.
A.R. Rahman delivered a surprisingly stiff soundtrack for this one, mostly because the songs feel dropped in from an entirely different movie shot on a soundstage in London with better lighting and less shouting. Tu Hi Meri Dost Hai plays twice in thirty minutes during scenes where characters are staring out at a rainy sea, and if I'm honest, the second time it starts up right as Zayed Khan is walking down a hallway in slow motion, I nearly threw my notebook at the wall. Zayed plays the greedy youngest sibling with a thin moustache and an assortment of shiny leather jackets that suggest he spent the wardrobe budget on himself.
Ghai shoots every single family confrontation in a harsh, bright light that strips all the warmth out of the interior sets, making the vast drawing rooms look like corporate boardrooms in a regional bank that just failed an audit. There are mirrors everywhere, reflecting actors from awkward angles so that Salman's shoulder seam or Anil's baton keeps cutting across the frame diagonally, muddying compositions that should have been kept simple and clean.
The middle act gets bogged down in a ridiculous court sequence involving a dead man's will, a stolen cassette tape, and a weeping mother who only appears when the plot needs someone to drop to their knees on a marble floor. Hindi films have always loved a good inheritance dispute, but this one treats millions of rupees like pocket change that can be handed over after a quick emotional song about how much brothers used to love playing cricket together in the backyard when they were nine.
Salman keeps his sunglasses tucked into his shirt pocket for most of the runtime even when he is standing inside a dark study, and it's a small thing but it bugged me every time the overhead light caught the tinted glass just right and threw a green glare onto his cheekbone. He doesn't look like a struggling musician or an angry son; he looks like a movie star who showed up to the set with his own trailer and a personal trainer waiting off-camera with a protein shake.
The climax involves a wheelchair race down a hospital ramp and a reconciliation that happens so fast you get whiplash trying to figure out which brother owns the factory now. Bollywood movies often struggle with the transition from bitter family feud to heartwarming reunion, but Yuvvraaj skips the transition entirely and just jumps straight to everyone hugging under a chandelier while the credits roll over a reprise of the title track that is mixed twice as loud as the dialogue.