Rating : ⭐️
Genre: Romance
Year: 2025
Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes
Director: Mohit Suri
Cast: Aneet Padda, Ahaan Panday, Geeta Sharma
Kid rating: PG
Saiyaara is apparently a sleeper hit. This film has been running houseful and I finally managed to see it this afternoon. After the way this film was hyped, I was hoping that this would indeed be a novel romance. Alas, it was not to be.
Vaani Batra (Aneet Padda) has suffered a major life setback, and it has left her withdrawn and unhappy. Then she meets Krish Kapoor (Ahaan Panday), a young musician with a fiery temper. When the two are thrown together during a song collaboration (she’s a writer) they fall in love. But there are more problems in store for the young couple; they just don’t know it yet . . .
Let me start with the good. This is a Mohit Suri film and a Yash Raj production, so the film has the sheen of expensive film-making. The execution is done well, and technically it’s not a bad film. The lead actors making their debut also do a decent job.
The problem is that Saiyaara is all melodrama and very little character development. This is a romance and to feel for the two star-crossed lovers we need to actually like them or at the very least sympathize with them. We can’t though because the character development is little to non-existent.
Vaani is a timid wallflower with parents who are a little too involved in her life. Quite coddled, Vaani lacks essential life skills, but she mopes rather well. Krish is an angry young man. When he is not brawling or hooking up with random women, he walks around with a self-confident swagger. Bollywood machismo at its best.
Angry Krish is also angry and overbearing around Vaani. He bosses her around, feels free to invade her privacy, and Vaani, instead of running a mile, falls in love with him. From the moment these two meet, thanks to director Suri, each scene between the two is a stylized encounter. The aesthetics are sound enough, so it is a pity that the situations are so cringy and contrived; there’s not a shred of true emotion in all that romance.
While Vaani and Krish are given backstories to explain why they behave the way they do, it is never quite convincing. We never get a feel for who these people are, or what makes them tick. I don’t fault the actors for that – both Ahaan Pandey and Aneet Padda did fine acting-wise. They don’t have super-impressive personalities though, so not sure how they would do in grittier roles, minus all the Suri styling.
The background music is incessant, so much so that one never actually gets a chance to feel for the characters on one’s own – the music just dins it in. Mohit Suri’s films are generally strong on melodrama and thin on substance. So too with this film. But unlike his films which have great music, Saiyaara suffers from a very average soundtrack.
This film’s plot line is a jaded one, and uses hackneyed Bollywood tropes. Saiyara regurgitates the same old juvenile nonsense and presents it as a romance. If you really want to watch a good romance in the same vein, watch Rockstar or see this list of Best Romances. There is nothing new or fresh about Saiyara’s tired tripe; these are yesterday’s leftovers, served cold.
Kidwise: Liplocks and one sex scene. The real damage comes in subjecting your child to puerile notions of romance, images of women as helpless, hesitant waifs.
