Purani Jeans

Purani Jeans is a slow & cliched movie about friendship.Bollywood has a lot to answer for, such as dancing around trees, love triangles, cliched friends ( such as the fat friend and the geek one), single mothers and more. However, in this film, all those awful tropes and cliches have come together to give us a truly painful movie.Written and directed by Tanushri Chattrji Bassu, the film takes place in the odd world of a hill station Kasauli. We have the story of the "Kasauli Cowboys", who wear cowboy hats which look suspiciously like the ones found by the side of a beach in Goa. The idea is to take us back into the world of friendships and the troubles & travails of growing up. Where it falls flat, is in its execution.

The movie is about five friends whose stories are re-counted by Sid (Tanuj Virwani) in flashback mode. The world was simpler in the past, no mobiles and things. But alcohol is readily available to anyone who looks over 21 years of age. Never mind, I digress. Coming back to the story, these five friends are the standard five friends that anyone could have. You have the book-ish nerd who is repressing his creative instinct – Sid (Tanuj Virwani), then you have his best friend – the ‘super awesome’ Sam (Aditya Seal), the local tough guy – Bobby (Param Baidwaan), the over-weight and always hungry foodie – Tino (Kashyap Kapoor) and the not-so-geeky, slightly loser-ish scaredy-cat – Suzy (Raghav Raj Kakker). These five friends are the only guys at the whole of the hillstation. It begs the question where is everyone else.

The movie is about these friendships. We get to see various situations arise which involve just these five. However, in the course of the story, you get to witness all the different teenage troubles. From growing up with a single mom, to feeling abandoned by the family, to unwanted pregnancies, to running after hot blonde girls and many more. You get the feeling that in this movie, they wanted to tell all of those stories. Unfortunately, they fail. In trying to cover all of these topics, the story starts to lack depth. There isn’t a connection that can be made here. All you are left feeling is that the past is some place you don’t want to visit. Instead of nostalgia you are filled with nausea.

Then there is whole misogynistic point of view with regards to the women in the film. The movie drags on and you will wonder about how long will someone loiter in the past. With movies about friends, you get engaged and captivated by their individual stories and you invest in them. Here, each story of the five is half-baked. There are no connections made. The love interest in this film is played by Izabelle Leite, a Brazilian model turned actress. Apart from being a pretty face whose voice is badly dubbed, she is just window decoration. At the end of it, the movie takes you and pushes you to the very limits of your patience. What started off as a walk down memory lane, turns into a mire of confusion. A movie about friends and friendships but just ends up being a collection of cliches.This movie takes patience to watch. So if you have nothing better to do and you want to watch a movie where you will laugh at the film and not with it, then this is for you.