Youth, produced by E2C Talkies, was released in theatres today. In this section, we are going to review the latest Telugu-dubbed release in the town.
Plot:
The year is 2014. Praveen (Ken Karunas) has somehow managed to finish his SSC with a sub-par grade. Once in the college, he chases Preshika (Meenakshi Dinesh), a beautiful collegemate who falls for his bubbly ways. In a twist, he also starts getting close to Sonal (Priyadarshni Yadav), a beauty who claims to have discovered him on Facebook. Meanwhile, Ganga (Anishma Anilkumar) is waiting in the wings. Who is Praveen destined to marry?
Post-Mortem:
Youth is more of a high-school comedy filled with tedious Kollywoodisms. In Tamil cinema, there are certain rituals: buddies don't talk; rather, they shout at each other. Awkward eating is filmed with relish, as if it is a plot detail. There are colourisms or fat-shaming jokes or both. There is a class topper who has no redeeming quality; he is arrogant and might be a north Indian named Siddharth. There is only one hard-working person (in this case, it is Praveen's father, played by Suraj Venjaramoodu) and his son deems it fit to insult him by naming a dog after him. This is the state of Tamil cinema nowadays. Even "decent" movies from Kollywood are meandering cringe-fests.
Youth is a nibba-nibbi story taken to awkward heights. Praveen is a good-for-nothing teen who smiles like he is always entranced at the sight of a beautiful girl. He and his friends dance like jokers at annual events; additionally, they feel emotional about their annual ritual and expect the audience to feel sympathy for their well-earned right to harass teachers during their dance-offs.
Praveen is your quintessential Tamil cinema hero who likes to shame baldness and old men with saggy testicles. He is given a superficial inner life: he gets violent if someone tells him he is not supposed to "love" two girls at a time. In every other scene, he is talking about or looking at or getting mesmerized at the sight of one or another girl.
Praveen doesn't have to try hard to win over the heart of the beautiful girl he is currently dating on the college campus. Ganga, for example, is touched by the way he teaches her how to eat biryani. There is a fatso girl in the girl gang and she is mean. There is a fatso male in the boy gang and he suddenly unleashes his inner Agent Tina (the Vikram character) in a scene. This is not creativity. These are Insta Reels pretending to be telling a story. One girl says she is an RP Patnaik fan so a couple of his chartbusters could be played out.
If an impressionable teen watches Youth, he would start believing that he is entitled to the love of girls. Have no inner life. Just be crazy all the time, be threatening, be silly, be intimidating, do some occasional gaslighting. There was a time when even semi-obscene vulgar comedies used to have a meaningful stretch in the climax. Youth is escapist, soulless nonsense.
Closing Remarks:
Youth is an exhausting exercise in Nibba-Nibbi tropes that trades genuine storytelling for crude Kollywoodisms and Instagram Reel-style logic.
