There is a specific kind of candy-colored artificiality in recent Hindi films that usually makes me want to slide right out of my seat and into the lobby for a stale pretzel. Meher Azeem’s feature debut hits that exact visual register from its opening frames, drenched in saturated blues and confectionary pinks, yet somehow it avoids feeling like an aggressive exercise in brand-moodboard styling. Maybe it is because the story refuses to take its own aesthetic seriously, floating somewhere between a high school play and a fever dream that a hyperactive teenager might sketch in the margins of a chemistry notebook. If I'm honest, I spent the first twenty minutes bracing myself for the usual indie-quirk exhaustion that plagues so many modern streaming releases, waiting for the preciousness to curdle into something unwatchable.

Instead, the screenplay by Azeem and Devika Bewtra meanders through a single bizarre day in Mumbai with a looseness that feels genuinely earned rather than mathematically calculated. Two teenagers who barely know each other find themselves stranded together following a morning of minor catastrophes, and the narrative simply lets them drift from one idiosyncratic encounter to another without any crushing dramatic weight bearing down on their shoulders. They stumble into underground music gigs, navigate the eccentricities of bizarrely theatrical older adults, and generally exist in a state of suspended animation that feels entirely accurate to the particular brand of late-adolescent dissociation that nobody ever captures quite right on screen. It is a structure that frustrates viewers who demand rigorous plot progression, preferring instead to hang out with its characters as they debate music, stare at ceilings, and absorb the chaotic energy of a city that rarely pauses for breath.

Yashaswini Dayama plays the protagonist, Vivek, with a frantic, unpolished energy that completely anchors the movie's more indulgent flights of fancy, her performance relying on messy hair and darting eye movements rather than any grand emotional speeches. Opposite her, Karanvir Malhotra adopts a weary, soft-spoken detachment that balances out her manic velocity, creating a dynamic that reminds me a bit of Greta Gerwig in Greenberg, where two awkward orbits simply collide and decide to keep walking together because the alternative is sitting alone in a quiet room. They bounce off each other with a casual, non-romantic intimacy that feels refreshing in an industry obsessed with immediate sparks and grand, sweeping declarations of affection. When they sing together on a rooftop or argue about nothing in particular, you completely forget you are watching a scripted narrative and start to feel like you are intruding on a real, fragile friendship forming in real-time.

Abhay Deol shows up later as a rockstar with a terrible wig and an even worse attitude, chewing through his scenes with the gleeful abandon of an actor who is just happy to be wearing velvet and playing an electric guitar on set. He brings a strange, lounge-lizard charisma to the proceedings, acting as a bizarre guardian angel for the wandering kids while constantly threatening to derail the movie's gentle rhythm with his sheer theatricality. It is a supporting turn that could easily have felt grating or overly cartoonish in less steady hands, but Deol plays him with enough self-awareness that you buy into his ridiculous lifestyle. There is a tiny audio glitch during one of his musical numbers where his vocal track noticeably dips and sounds entirely disconnected from the microphone he is holding, and while it is a small mechanical thing, it bugged me every single time it happened because the sound mixing elsewhere is usually so crisp.

The cinematography by Tanushree Das captures Mumbai not as a gritty urban jungle or a romanticized postcard, but as a sprawling, sun-bleached playground where neon signs bleed into the afternoon haze and shadows look painted on with watercolors. Every frame feels carefully composed yet utterly spontaneous, utilizing wide lenses that distort the edges of the frame just enough to remind you that nothing in this world is entirely stable. Paired with a soundtrack that leans heavily into breezy indie-pop and eccentric retro grooves, the audiovisual design creates an intoxicating bubble that is remarkably easy to sink into for a couple of hours. It is a sensory experience that owes a massive debt to Wes Anderson, obviously, but Azeem uses those symmetrical compositions and flat pans with a loose, messy charm that prevents the film from feeling like a sterile imitation of American indie tropes.

Beneath the quirky exterior and the barrage of pastel colors, the movie actually engages with the quiet terror of growing up in a system that expects you to have your entire existence figured out by the time you turn eighteen. Bollywood movies have traditionally treated youth through the lens of either high-drama rebellion or glossy, aspirational romance, which makes this messy, low-stakes alternative feel so distinct. These characters are not fighting against oppressive parents or trying to save the world from some nefarious plot; they are simply trying to figure out how to exist in a space that feels simultaneously too large and completely suffocating. The themes of identity and belonging are never hammered home with obvious dialogue or tearful confessions in rainy parking lots, instead lurking quietly in the background as the kids share stale snacks on local trains and watch the city blur past their windows.

There is a recurring musical motif that pops up every time the narrative threatens to slow down, and by the fourth or fifth time it drops, it starts to wear out its welcome completely, feeling less like a leitmotif and more like a crutch the editing room reached for whenever they weren't sure how to bridge two scenes. It is a minor pacing flaw in a film that generally flows like water, but it highlights the occasional tendency of the direction to rely on stylistic flourishes to cover up stretches where the momentum genuinely dips. Even so, the overall generosity of the project carries it past those occasional speed bumps, leaving you with an impression of warmth that lingers long after the final credits stop rolling across the screen. Hindi cinema needs more tiny, misshapen experiments like this one, projects that care less about hitting global streaming metrics and more about capturing the specific, unquantifiable feeling of being young, confused, and slightly lost on a Tuesday afternoon.