Friday Night Plan Review: Starring Babil Khan as Sid, Amrith Jayan as Adi, Medha Rana as Nat or Natasha, Aadhya Anand as Nits or Nitya, with Ninad Kamat as SI Pingale and Juhi Chawla in a special appearance as Sid and Adi’s mother, the Hindi-language coming-of-age film has been written and directed by Vatsal Neelakantan. Kassim Jagmagia, Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar step in as the producers under the banner of Excel Entertainment.
With a runtime of 1 hour and 47 minutes, the Indian movie started streaming on Netflix on September 1.
Friday Night Plan Review Contains No Spoilers
Friday Night Plan Review: Discussion
In a refreshing twist of colour and tone, the latest Netflix Hindi film has brought a heartwarming image of brotherhood in an Indian context that most of us may have been longing for quite a time now. With a dearth of dark, mature and adult content flooding OTT platforms, movie makers seemed to have forgotten the evergreen lighthearted charm of genuine feel-good movies centred around a vision of coming-of-age that’s actually relatable.
Friday Night Plan deflects from that common contemporary mature cliche and rather harks back to the old-school goodness of simple teenage stories that aren’t necessarily consumed by their obsession with steamy encounters but are more interested in dealing with actual conversations between people.
Starting off with a usually witnessed scene, the movie introduces us to the family of Sid, a school-going senior who’s about to be done with his school experience and ready (or not) to move on to the next phase of his life – college. And so, his present life is defined by him struggling to send out college applications to the right college, delving into his own existential crisis, while also helping his single mother out in any way he can, of course when he’s not off arguing with his younger brother Adi.
Like most young relationships between two Indian brothers, these two also fail to get along due to their own individual quirks and disagreements, while their mother’s biggest dream of all is for them to get along well with each other. Babil’s Sid becomes a situational hero when he’s finally granted the chance to get off the bench and actually play in his school team’s football match, to which Adi comes to root for him.
On scoring the final winning goal for his school, he instantly finds his one-time glory and fame, with everyone calling out his name, cheering for him and wanting to talk to him after the match; but to his teammates, he still remains to be seen as the “nerd”.
To right this wrong in the popularity contest that is high school, his brother urges Sid to respond to his invitation to the school’s “Friday Night Plan” tradition of an after-school party as a celebratory change in life. This is where the film picks up its basic premise and finds the two brothers heading out for an adventure they’ve never had the chance to taste before. It brings up their old memories, fights, and talks of the family, thus, revealing their personal identities to some extent.
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In the end, this is also where the movie takes the crown – Babil and Amrith’s onscreen chemistry as brothers is too good to be ignored. Their easy-to-combust fights, which are equally easy to diffuse, emerge as believable instances shared between two brothers of nearly the same age, but different temperaments and personalities.
Certain scenes from the movie reminded me of quite a few American coming-of-age films like Booksmart and 10 Things I Hate About You, to name a few. And then the inclusion of the American Prom tradition in this modern Indian flick further added to the sense of derivative previously seen archetypes. Regardless of these refurbished additions, the film’s heart is still in the right place, especially when it comes to the leading onscreen brothers, who are the charming knights of the project leading the victory lap.
The initial sequences of the movie also reminded me of the old children’s hit movie Chillar Party (but this time set in a high school), and so in a way, the newest Netflix endeavour bridges the gap between the common coming-of-age hits emerging out of the West and the old Indian TV movies that many of us used to watch on loop owing to their obvious feel good filmography and themes.
Therefore, it becomes even more evident as to who the movie is trying to appeal to – it’s the younger generation, of course, but also the early Gen Z counterparts who’re stuck between not feeling Gen Z enough, who can’t be considered millennials either, and are just constantly riding on the nostalgia train to again encounter wholesome content on OTT.
Babil’s infectious Golden Retriever energy has translated well on screen by efficiently bringing up his character’s awkward energy as a reserved boy, who’s not necessarily a party animal but could do well with some change of pace to remind him of the present at hand. Whereas, Jayan rises as the universal image of a younger brother looking up to his seemingly perfect elder sibling, who also happens to have some valid truth bombs and much-needed lessons in his pocket (such people should never be underestimated).
Plus, though only present in a few scenes, Juhi Chawla’s aura as a loving and concerned mother has remained uncontested since the old Bhootnath days.
Final Thoughts
It’s a feel-good film that came as a warming surprise in the midst of being bombarded by mature OTT content every now and then. I would definitely recommend this to those people craving for the nostalgic chill-ness offered by old children’s movies that we would turn to on sleepover nights or watch on TV every weekend, irrespective of how many times they’d already been aired on that channel before.
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