Udaan Movie Reviews

Udaan is unconventional Bollywood at its biting best. The film is a moody, introspective and ekdum different look at teenage angst: an issue that has never been given the importance it deserves in Hindi cinema which has by and large relegated the 16-something story to teeny-bopper rolls-in-the-haystack romances. But Rajat Barmecha's Rohan isn't your run-of-the mill Hindi film teenager. He has more substantial (read realistic) problems

Much against our will, at several instances in life, one has to helplessly bow down to some entity – be it your teacher, boss, kin or anyone else. Udaan narrates a tale where a son is almost on an extended detention under his disciplinarian father’s domain. Through this allegory, Udaan inspires one to break away from all bindings of life and fly freely. In its very first scene, four teenagers jump off their hostel compound wall

Master director Kanti Shah’s unique contribution to the warped Indian male hormone, I’m afraid, will remain under-rated related stories. Video generation of the early ‘90s is likely to know him better, and perhaps relate to the four Bishop Cotton schoolboys in this film, caught at a late night show of Kanti Shah’s Angoor at Shimla’s Rivoli cinema. That Rivoli, I suppose, could well be in Delhi’s Cannaught Place.

During my schooling days in Himachal Pradesh, a fellow student wouldn't long for the annual vacations in December, like all kids generally do. I often wondered why. Much later, I was told that his stern [and over-dominating] father called the shots with a cane in hand and my friend would literally shiver at the very thought of spending the next three months with his family. We lost touch after we completed schooling

Udaan, which is auteured by the talent of Anuraag Kashyap, was recently screened at Cannes, so it has to be a good film in some way, which it is. It’s a sensitive, quiet coming of age story, which is set in Jamshedpur in an older India, before malls and mobiles swamped the scene. Being independent for a middle class teenager was a distant dream then. Udaan isn’t usual Bollywood commercial cinema; it’s a well-told story

In 1959 in France, a teenage boy ran away from a juvenile home. That moment in 400 Blows was symbolic for French cinema, as with it they left the baggage of cliché behind and embraced a new, youthful vibrancy that would change cinema of the World. Fifty years later, Hindi cinema finds itself just at that moment of epiphany with this year's, perhaps even this decade's best Hindi film, in Udaan. Will Hindi cinema hold on to the wings

Low-budget Udaan will appeal to the youth in the big cities.