Youngistaan
Synopsis:
Picture Abhimanyu Kaul standing right there on a crowded stage in Japan, totally detached from the cheering masses, while a random upbeat pop song blasts out of nowhere just to remind us that he is a carefree young NRI living his best life as a video game developer with his girlfriend Anvita Chauhan, who is played by Neha Sharma, because every single one of these romance-heavy hindi films needs a gorgeous leading lady who's surprisingly cool with her man wearing graphic tees and playing Tetris all day.
So then out of nowhere his dad, who happens to be the sitting Prime Minister of India, falls violently ill back home in Delhi, and Abhimanyu is dragged straight from his Tokyo apartment back to the dusty political corridors of the capital city.
The funny thing is that Jackky Bhagnani spends the next twenty minutes looking perpetually confused in a series of really crisp, well-fitted Nehru jackets that honestly cost more than my entire apartment.
Anyway, his dad kicks the bucket right when things were getting tense, and the old corrupt political party bosses led by a scheming politician played by Kiku Sharda decide that Abhimanyu is the ultimate puppet they can control, so they thrust this twenty-something gamer into the prime minister chair without even letting him finish his breakfast.
This is where the movie gets super wild because Abhimanyu refuses to just sign papers and smile for cameras, deciding instead to actually do his job, which pisses off his advisors and causes massive friction with Anvita since she didn't sign up to be the first lady of a chaotic third-world democracy while dodging paparazzi every time she wants to grab a samosa.
We need to talk about the random background extra in scene forty-two who is just standing behind the speaker's podium for five whole minutes wearing a neon yellow turban that doesn't match anyone else's security uniform, and I literally rewound the tape three times just to stare at this guy because he's eating a hidden packet of peanuts while checking his Nokia phone during a national emergency meeting.
Right after that hilarious distraction, the narrative rockets through a massive national corruption scandal, a sudden youth protest movement, three secret cabinet resignations, and a nationwide power outage in under forty seconds flat.
Then we hit the interval point where the screen just slams to black right as Abhimanyu's private car gets pelted by rotten tomatoes thrown by angry union workers, and you're sitting there munching on your theater popcorn wondering how on earth a video game nerd is going to survive Indian coalition politics in the second half.
The post-interval stuff gets really heavy because Farooq Shaikh shows up as the fiercely loyal mentor figure Akbar, and every single second he is on screen is a masterclass in how veteran actors elevate cheesy bollywood movies just by raising an eyebrow and dropping deep wisdom with zero effort.
Abhimanyu starts pushing major anti-corruption bills through parliament, but the corrupt opposition parties team up with his own treacherous uncle to table a no-confidence vote, threatening to tear his government down before he can even launch his new youth employment scheme.
Things get even worse when a leaked MMS video tries to ruin his relationship with Anvita, leading to a dramatic rainy confrontation scene where she packs her bags and walks out of the official residence.
Boman Irani pops in around here as a crooked political mastermind chewing on cigars and plotting the downfall of the young leader with a creepy smirk, representing the old-school cynicism that Youngistaan is desperately trying to purge from modern hindi movies.
Abhimanyu refuses to resign, giving a massive, sweat-soaked speech on the steps of the parliament house where he basically tells all the corrupt grey-haired politicians to pack up and go home because the youth of the country are wide awake now.
The no-confidence motion goes to the floor, and the votes are tied right down to the wire, but then a hospitalized Akbar rolls his wheelchair into the assembly hall just in time to cast the deciding vote in favor of the prime minister.
Anvita walks back down the steps of the parliament plaza just as the final voting results flash across the giant news screens, offering a quiet, understanding nod from twenty feet away that tells us they are going to try and make this crazy political life work together.
Abhimanyu turns around, straightens his collar against the afternoon sun, and walks back through the giant wooden doors of the Parliament House to face another pile of pending file folders.
There is a specific kind of sweat that clings to the collar of a white cotton kurta in a July Mumbai afternoon shoot, and you can practically see it radiating off Jackky Bhagnani in the opening reel of Youngistaan, which is not great, not bad, just there. The film wants to be a modern political fable about a reluctant heir thrust into the Prime Minister's chair after his father dies, playing out like an earnest, lower-stakes version of what Ram Gopal Varma might have attempted on a better Tuesday. Syed Ahmad Afzal directs with a sort of polite neutrality that occasionally threatens to put the entire front row to sleep, avoiding bold visual choices in favor of standard-issue shot-reverse-shot coverage that makes even a national crisis look like a corporate board meeting discussion about stationery budgets. The screenplay relies heavily on contrivances that belong in a 1980s melodrama rather than a contemporary Hindi film attempting to court the youth vote, leaning on sudden cardiac arrests and secret diary entries to move the plot from one sterile set to the next.
Jackky Bhagnani as Abhimanyu Kaul tries very hard, perhaps a bit too hard, flashing a steady stream of earnest expressions that suggest he is constantly worried about leaving the oven on back at his London apartment. He lacks the effortless authority that someone like Rahul Bose brought to boardroom politics in other projects, but to be fair, the script rarely gives him an actual policy to debate beyond vague platitudes about honesty and youth empowerment. Neha Sharma plays his live-in girlfriend Anvita with a wardrobe that seems to have been budgeted more generously than her character arc, gliding through state dinners and prime ministerial motorcades with the breezy detachment of someone waiting for a lunch order to arrive. It is a small thing, but it bugged me how she holds her coffee mug in every scene as though it were a fragile bird she is afraid might suddenly take flight and shit on the Prime Minister's desk.
Then you have Farooq Shaikh in his final screen role, and the room just breathes differently whenever he is on camera, anchoring the chaotic political maneuvers with the quiet dignity of a veteran actor who could probably make a recitation of the telephone directory sound like high drama. His presence makes the surrounding artifice all the more glaring because he does not act like a politician playing a part; he simply inhabits the exhaustion of a man who has spent forty years watching idealism get ground into dust by party whips. Boman Irani shows up as the opposition leader with a painted-on sneer and enough theatrical bluster to fill a cricket stadium, though his character is written with such broad strokes that you half expect him to twirl an invisible mustache between takes. The supporting cast populates the background with varying degrees of conviction, though the sound design occasionally trips over itself, leaving visible gaps in the dialogue where a clumsy overdub clearly replaced a botched line reading from a junior minister.
Visually, the film operates on the aesthetic level of a high-end corporate advertisement for a national insurance brand, filled with sun-dappled lawns, impeccably ironed khadi, and tracking shots that glide down parliamentary corridors with zero urgency. The cinematography by Johny Lal is clean to a fault, refusing to embrace any genuine shadows or grit, rendering even the chaotic street protests safe enough to be screened during a family dinner on a Sunday afternoon. Sneha Khanwalkar and the rest of the music directors assemble a soundtrack that alternates between aggressive party anthems and lachrymose romantic ballads, though one particular love track plays during a crisis montage so often that you begin to wonder if the projectionist fell asleep with their finger stuck on the repeat button. It is a curious artifact of a specific era in Hindi movies when producers thought all you needed to capture the youth vote was a catchy rap hook and a montage of young people holding colorful placards in front of India Gate.
The underlying political ideology of Youngistaan is delightfully naive, proposing that all the country's systemic corruption can be cured if a handsome boy from London steps into the office, refuses to take bribes, and smiles at old ladies on street corners. It sidesteps actual legislative realities with the kind of breezy indifference that only commercial cinema can manage, reducing complex agricultural and economic debates to five-minute musical montages where everyone looks very concerned while looking at spreadsheets. Yet there is a strange, accidental charm in its complete lack of cynicism, functioning as a cinematic time capsule for a period when people still believed that a hashtag could topple a dynasty or reform a bureaucracy overnight. It does not reinvent the political drama genre by any stretch of the imagination, and it certainly won't dislodge classic depictions of statecraft from our collective memory, but it putters along with enough harmless good intentions to fill two hours on a rainy afternoon when you cannot be bothered to engage your brain.