Juniors Movie Review

Welcome to the never-never land of Tollywood's Junior College where students crack their medical entrance by getting full marks in Physiques, Chemistry, Vital Statistics and Body Languages. Yes, the blokes in Juniors spend all their time checking out each other's physiques, working on the chemistry between them and doing research on their girlfriend's vital statistics. Yet after five years, they come out of college with flying colors, as doctors, handsome Army chaps and more. And to think I studied hard in my Intermediate memorizing that darned Periodic Table and DeGauss theorem only to end up writing reviews on movies like this!

Juniors is strictly for the adolescents who refuse to grow up and grown-ups who refuse to stop behaving like adolescents. It's about a motley group of six junior college students coming of age, discovering themselves, expecting answers to their sexual intrigues and their frustration. If Mahesh (Naresh) can't stand his libido-driven Dad for getting hanky-panky with Mom, Pooja (Shireen) hates her Dad who can never think of anything but making out when a girl and guy meet. Then there is Anita who gets stoned on marijuana because her NRI parents have no time even for an MSN chat with her. And so on and so forth…

Unable to bear the torture from their parents, they all decide to run away from home to make a 'peaceful' living on their own. That's where the story begins.

After a two-day jolly ride, a dhaba dinner and a few fun bullock cart rides, they hit rock bottom. Starved, unwashed, unwanted and unable to do anything for their raging hormones, they make a few mistakes. A lot of mistakes, actually. As a result, one kid gets killed, another gets a taste of his manhood, another boy-girl pair gets boinked and one gets rehabilitated from her drug addiction.

After an eventful night in the prison and a few unsuccessful attempts at building a romantic tree house, they head home. You almost feel like cocking a snook at these losers and singing nyah nyah nyah nyah. But you desist because coming back home and announcing a truce means the movie is nearing its end!

Before we walk out, we are treated to some pearls of wisdom by the Principal (Prakash Raj) about how to bring up teenage children. But this whole talk unfortunately goes down the drain because not a single self-respecting parent would want to come anywhere close to this movie.

Naresh and Shireen play the lovey-dovey couple that can't take their eyes off each other. So they also get those steamy duets every now and then just to keep the adolescents in the viewers on a 'high' all the time. Naresh is the better of the lot and fits the role of a gangly, awkward teenager. Shireen is passable, except for her eyes, which look like she's suffering from a major hangover. The rest of the unidentified cast is just about okay.

Chakri's music is less than average and does nothing to alleviate the pain of watching two teenagers with raging hormones dance in the rain. The movie tries to give some chunks of wisdom to teens about AIDS, about the need to study hard (???) and about respecting parents. Somehow they forgot to tell us how to drink tea.

Juniors is strictly for the juveniles, adolescents, teens, youngsters and any other group that does not fit into either the kids or the adults category.