CHHICHHORE MOVIE REVIEW CLICK TO RATE THE MOVIE

In Nitesh Tiwari's Chhichhore, the reunion of five college friends, now in their mid-40's with receding hairlines, does not happen through a function where they could reminisce over a grand function. The cause of their meeting happens over tragedy, which is a fine conceit for a dramedy that hosts a mix of emotions over monotony.

Raghav, son of Anirudh aka Anni (Sushant Singh Rajput) a middle-aged corporate employee and his estranged wife Maya (played by Shraddha Kapoor), takes the extreme step of jumping from a building when he fails in the Engineering entrance test, due to his fear of being branded as a loser. In order to encourage a critically hospitalized Raghav, Anni narrates his college days to him, when he belonged to H4, a hostel that is known as the haven of losers.

In due course of the narration, Raghav gets accompanied by Anni's motley crew of friends, the always horny Sexa alias Gurmeet Singh Dhillon (played by Varun Sharma), chronic foul-mouther Acid (played by Naveen Polishetty), the timid Mummy aka Sundar (Tushar Pandey), the alcoholic Bevda (Saharsh Kumar Shukla) and the chain-smoking Derek (Tahir Bhasin) also known as the unofficial daddy of this gang.

The film's hilarious stretches arise from the quirks that we see in hostel life. Even there is laugh-out-loud scene involving these nicknames, where Gurmeet's father comes to know about his son's kinky title. The film pulls no punches in displaying the hormonal, adult humour. The humour is also balanced by the drama of the present, which works on similar lines of 'The last leaf'.

Chhichhore does have some good screenwriting that aids the humour well. We are introduced to a skinny guy during a ragging scene, only to know that he turns out to play the main role in the latter part of the film. There are many such smarts that make the film's the humour feel more organic and coherent, as opposed to becoming a compilation of scattered moments.

Chhichhore is well structured, wherein the flashbacks unfold like a nostalgic trip. There is a subplot involving sports competition between the hostels, and in order to redeem themselves from the tag of losers, H4 has to beat the brash, posh students of H3, headed by Ronnie (Prateik Babbar). The film works marvelously as an underdog movie. And through the competition, we get to witness some character-revealing instances that are surprising. The tussle leads to an anticipatory climax that is breathtakingly edited by Charu Shree Roy.

The emotional beats of Chhichhore's narrative echoes that of Raju Hirani's '3 Idiots' and conceit is similar to that of Karan Johar's Student of the Year. But unlike the latter, Chhichhore is much more grounded, with much better ensemble performance and some poignant revelations from its central characters. However, for the most part, the film presents a black and white portrayal of its conflicts and characters and the climactic portions manage to surprise us by compensating for the flaw. Chhichhore is an effortlessly crowd pleasing film with a lot of heart.