Friday Night Plan: Impressive Debut That Conveys A Lot Without Saying Much

MOST days I watch Schitt’s Creek before going to sleep. The Eugene and Dan Levy show is an affirming work of fiction, possibly the best we have. But there is something else the series does for me. Centered on an affluent family whose personal ties are strengthened once their materialistic baggage gets displaced, the outing serves as a reminder that all adversities lead to a sunnier resolution. And that the four central characters tide through a downswing that turns out to be anything but, while also gently underlining that not all resolutions need to be earned.

Watching Vatsal Neelakantan’s Friday Night Plan, I thought of the Canadian sitcom a lot. This is not to say that the feature is anything like Schitt’s Creek but the filmmaker employs a similar brand of empathy towards its characters while foregrounding a liberating idea: something terrible need not happen for everything to fall in place.

Neelakantan’s debut outing is about an 18-year-old boy Siddharth Menon (Baabil Khan) who is forced to grow up post his father’s demise. Paternal absence has made him more responsible, less cool. His 15-year-old brother, Aditya (Amrith Jayan), on the other hand is more comfortable with attention. They go to the same upscale school in Bombay. Sid wears his uptightness like a cover till one day he scores a goal in a close inter-school match, saves the day and secures an entry pass to a coveted Friday night plan with his classmates.

In more ways than one, the film is about fitting in. It is about rites of passage and youth. Hindi films generally have a way of going about the transition by imbuing the age with unlikeability. Of late, take the Netflix-backed Class for instance where the narrative is designed with such excess that it only qualifies as guilty pleasure. Or even the Excel-backed Eternally Confused And Eager For Love where the follies of youth comprise the plot, reducing it to an aesthetic.

Neelakantan’s lovely little film resists all such trappings, evolving truly into a fitting adult fiction of our times. The venture unfolds with the expressed purpose of depicting youth for what it is and what it looks like. This shift in slant infuses touching authenticity. Take for instance how none of Siddharth’s friends are outrightly villainised, or that though the film effectively unfolds in one night, what happens during that time defies the life-altering form it assumes. Or that a place which the adolescent students of Siddharth’s school refer to as JC turns out to be a dive bar called Jagdish Chand resto bar. It is a nice touch highlighting youth’s tendency of making things cool from what is inherently mundane.

But what really clinches the film’s merit of inhabiting the gaze of its protagonist without replicating it is the way it commits to lending importance to something like a Friday night plan or the pressure it creates on Siddharth for having a cop following his car. In a larger context none of these things should matter but Neelakantan understands that in the teenage years everything feels like a lot.

There is a lightness of touch to the proceedings which counts for his distinct voice. Nothing feels gimmicky. Not the casting of Baabil in a role which could easily feel derivative. Not even in the wrath of the cop (a wonderful Ninad Kamat) who takes a minor incident as a personal affront. Through his character and the rage he feels towards the two young boys, Neelakantan points to the way adults are trained to view every act of youth as reckless abandon, underlining too how his film is different from the assembly line of young adult fiction crowding the streaming space.

Friday Night Plan opens with a lovely scene where a lot is conveyed with very little — three pictures tell the story of a woman losing her husband, two young boys losing their father. The minimal moment makes all three protagonists of the story. This is perhaps why the film also doubles up as a superb sibling story where the younger brother hypes up his elder brother in public and fights with him in private. Both actors look the role but the young Amrith Jayan is terrific as Aditya. His portrayal of a young boy who admires his brother and is equally scared of him is one without a single false beat.

It is no mean feat to tell a story about a time, to narrativise a feeling. Friday Night Plan does not explode into a defining film of youth but it also never aspires to be one. At most it reminds us of that one night when everything fell into place and the next morning never felt better.