An official adaptation of the 2014 Malayalam film Bangalore Days, Yaariyan 2 follows the story of three cousins as they navigate life in the city of Mumbai. Now, I remember watching Bangalore Days in 2017, as a part of my Malayalam startup pack(I was just about discovering Malayalam cinema then), and I was absolutely blown away by the light and breezy nature of its storytelling that did feel so fresh and pleasant. But trust the Hindi Film Industry to miss the nuance of the original with its remake! The story here needed to be a frame to frame adaptation for things to work in the film’s favour. Yet, the story just felt a little incomplete wherein I wasn’t fully invested in any of the characters. And in my review I shall throw a little light on it too. The screenplay standing at 148 minutes is about 20 odd minutes lesser in runtime as compared to the original. Yes, a curtailed screenplay is the need of the hour for sure but by doing so, the film missed out on such a big portion of the world building and the lack of characterization, that the screenplay was always playing catch up from the word go. To be fair, that entire 20 minute opening act was the missing link in what was otherwise a decently penned screenplay. 

One important aspect that sets apart Malayalam films from the others is their phenomenal ability to build a world and develop characters around it. The same notion is seldom followed by the Hindi film industry which often gets straight to the point and decides to play catchup by introducing a host of songs along the way. Now, there is nothing right or wrong in both these tried and tested approaches. But when you are remaking a cult film, this point gets even more important. The drama in Yaariyan 2 directly opens with the introduction of one of the protagonists whose mother coaxes her to get married. The viewers know nothing about her or the baggage that she has been carrying till that point. A needless variation of an inherent illness is forgotten after the initial reels after her married is fixed. You are also introduced to the other 2 protagonists in similar fashion and there was an instant disconnect to the drama whose driving force was essentially the bond between the three characters. 

The proceedings aren’t bad but because there was the initial disconnect, I found myself heavily distracted from the drama. The ability of Bangalore Days lay in balancing the tracks of each of the three protagonists while never losing focus of their bonds between each other. So at any given point of time, each of the protagonists was at the helm of affairs in the original. But here, the events are a little scattered and the required focus on any particular event just seems a little stray, while not seamlessly shifting from one event to another. Also, I wished to see a little more of Mumbai as a character, something which was done in the original wherein Bangalore played an important character. 

While the skeleton of the drama remains faithful to the original, the inherent essence is missing. To give you a perspective, the character of DQ who is depressed, meets a positive personality who is paraplegic, and someone who transforms his life. But here, the character of Meezaan meets a paraplegic girl who herself is depressed, and so the impact that she has on the character of Meezan is relatively lesser than the original. It is good to introduce things but not for the sake of it! To be fair, the emotions do connect at some places and that had a lot to do with the technical aspects of the drama which I will get to in my next section. 

While the first half is okay, the second half suffers from frequent lags in the screenplay that considerably slows down the proceedings. But my main issue with the second hour was that it was tonally off from the original. In Bangalore Days, the emotions were subtle, almost used in the second layer while the tone of the film remained light and frothy. But here, the emotions were used in the first layer wherein the proceedings did get a little too melodramatic while shifting its focus with an elongated flashback sequence featuring the character of Yash Dasgupta. The events leading up to the final act are more or less similar to the original but overall, the screenplay although decently well penned, fell woefully short of the original.