Big Girls Don’t Cry is simply too solemn to be enjoyable and too timid to be actually daring, feels Deepa Gahlot.
For the brand new technology, it’s most likely the Harry Potter books set in a boarding college that present a glimpse right into a world of privilege (although Hogwarts just isn’t a ‘regular’ college) however, for many years, it was Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers sequence, set in a lady’s boarding college that laid out the enjoyable, video games, friendships, homesickness and distress that make up a pungent mix of feelings in a life away from dwelling.
Later, books and movies about hostel life portrayed them as mini variations of jail, the place self-discipline is extra necessary than creating an setting conducive to studying. The ones that includes boys had been notably brutal however even the ladies’ boarding college tales used the identical tropes of rebel, raging hormones, forbidden love and common badassery imagined to painting youthful revolt in opposition to the constraints of the institution.
Unfortunately, Big Girls Don’t Cry, created by Nitya Mehra, is simply too solemn to be enjoyable and too timid to be actually daring.
If one of many main plot factors is a few bunch of spoilt wealthy women attempting to get one in every of their attractive mates laid, then it is clear that the present is significantly in need of workable concepts. And for a sequence with that identify, there may be greater than sufficient weeping, whining and moaning.
The seven-part present is about within the Vandana Valley Girls’ School, an unique establishment set in an image postcard hill city. It’s run by the strict, unsmiling principal Anita Verma (Pooja Bhatt), who simply wants scales and a few fire-breathing to disclose her interior dragon.
She grandly proclaims that she is within the ‘country-building enterprise’ with nothing a lot to point out for it. Strangely, the varsity appears to have college students of only one age group and focuses on one gang of hell-raisers.
In an elite college, expertise is among the many record of issues ‘not tolerated’ — telephones should not allowed and there is only one laptop within the library. Which archaic world are they residing in? In actuality, wealthy youngsters use tablets in school and classes are performed utilizing LED screens!
There is nothing to counsel that the varsity is run with a cruelly agency hand however Dia (Akshita Sood) retains attempting to flee saying that she doesn’t wish to flip right into a ‘plastic Barbie’ when this isn’t even a ending college. None of the opposite women appear to be they had been being brainwashed by the patriarchy, besides maybe Jayshree Chhetry ‘JC’ (Tenzin Lhakyila), a princess from Nepal, who is anticipated to marry a prince and stick with it the royal line.
The solely trainer who’s pleasant and cheerful is — no shock right here — the drama coach Aliya Lamba (Zoya Hussain), who has written and is directing what seems like a deplorable play about ladies breaking out of cages and ‘sticking it to males’.
Anita Verma, correctly, requests a change of ending for which she is made out to be a ‘censoring’ monster.
The most resourceful of the gang is Roohi (Aneet Padda), whose mother and father (Mukul Chadda-Raima Sen) stay in the identical city and infrequently play host to her mates of their lavish dwelling. But she can be angst-ridden as a result of her mother and father are in an sad marriage.
She and JC kind a detailed bond however it’s the college sports activities champ Leah ‘Ludo’ (Avanitka Vandanapu), who’s punished for her somewhat chaste relationship with Vidushi (Himanshi Pandey). The latter is expelled from college! In at the moment’s instances, that is purpose sufficient for a media storm.
Anandita ‘Pluggy’ Rawat (Dalai) writes semi-porn tales and needs to expertise intercourse. To circumvent the underage downside, she is proven to have failed twice and turned 18 (Vandana Valley Girls’ School appears to not have heard of ATKT which is now accepted in most faculties and no child is definitely held again).
Noor Hassan (Afrah Aayed) is the pushed head woman who has clear objectives however can be affected by an identification disaster.
The story may presumably have labored if seen from the point-of-view of the outsider, the scholarship woman Kavya Yadav (Vidushi), who hides this truth and desperately tries to slot in and be accepted into the ‘gang.’
But even Kavya just isn’t precisely an underprivileged right-to-education child; her mom visits the varsity wearing a chic sari and driving a automotive.
There is not any actual disaster within the lives of those women besides the love triangle that develops when Roohi and JC fall for a similar boy. Yes, there are boys, from the neighbourhood Wood Oaks, who flip as much as dance on the social and for debates, film dates and such.
This is a coming-of-age sequence, so there are a few romances brewing and a really obliging boy who helps Pluggy (why she known as that could be a little vulgar) observe for her intercourse session with a bloke she picked off the web!
It is, in fact, in no way important to have a critical disaster. A present about younger women can comprise unusual little moments too however what does one make of a giant chunk of an episode dedicated to them by chance getting stoned on narcotic berries and hallucinating?
Far from being a grim jail-like place (although it does have an isolation ward seen in direction of the tip), the varsity permits the ladies to run round. There are events and tenting journeys, an off-campus quick meals hangout and little or no learning. Not even the pretence that grades would matter to those privileged brats.
The ‘gang’ commandeers a shed for his or her secret conferences, a distance away from the varsity, to which the seemingly vigilant academics and single safety guard are oblivious (Which trendy college doesn’t have a community of cameras?). Their pranks are innocent and their Dia-led mutinies contrived to be woke.
Still, if the sequence is watchable, it’s for the fabulous younger forged, at the least a few of them. Aneet Padda particularly has the potential for a correct showbiz profession.
They are all fresh-faced, earnest and have a horny display screen presence.
The sequence, nonetheless, may have accomplished with a sharper deal with points confronted by at the moment’s younger ladies or at the least captured a few of their spirit with humour. There are numerous teen excessive jinks however hardly something to smile about.
Big Girls Don’t Cry streams on Amazon Prime Video
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