Wake up to the next superstar!

Coming of age stories are such a rarity in mainstream Bollywood and that probably, is the first reason anyone would fine "Wake Up Sid" cute and entertaining. Debutant Director Ayan Mukherji does a brilliant job with establishing his lead characters clearly in the first few reels itself- thus you have the rich, spoilt and happy go lucky Siddharth (Ranbir Kapoor) whose only aim in life is to have fun. He ignores his studies, roams around with his friends and finally fails in his exams. This is too much to handle for his businessman father (Anupam Kher) who has had a rags-to-riches past and his affectionate, uneducated mother (Supriya Pathak Kapur). Disillusioned with his son's ways, the father asks Sid to leave the house.

Sid takes shelter with Aisha (Konkona Sen Sharma), who he had earlier bumped into at a party. Aisha hails from Kolkata and has come down to Mumbai to pursue her dreams of working with "Mumbai Beat"- an upmarket magazine. She is very clear about what she wants in life and is very methodical and practical- totally opposite to what Sid is. Though she is charmed by Sid, she finds it difficult to adjust to his ways and finally becomes instrumental in bringing down a positive change in his attitude.

It is a very simple story that relies primarily on its 2 protagonists- Sid and Aisha played brilliantly by Ranbir and Konkona. Ranbir lends his character a natural charm and lights up the screen with his presence. He portrays the playfulness, innocence, disillusionment and realization of Sid very effectively and is the strongest link in this movie. Konkona successfully plays a perfect foil to Ranbir and ends up being Aisha on screen. Anupam Kher and Supriya Pathak are good in their respective parts and Rahul Khanna ends up playing a useless cameo like in his earlier outing. Namit Das and Shikha Talsania who play Sid's friends, are extremely impressive.

Anil Mehta's camera captures Mumbai like never before and anybody who watches the movie is likely to end up falling in love with the city. Shankar- Ehsaan- Loy's compositions stand out especially "Bawra" and "Kya Kahoon". Wake Up Sid is quite a departure from the kind of movies that Dharma Productions have made till date and Karan Johar should be congratulated for making an enjoyable movie on a serious theme.

The real hero here is undoubtedly Ayan Mukherji who comes up with a strong script and has learnt his basics of direction very well. Ayan appears to be in complete control over his script, cast and crew and deserves recognition for having come out with a clean, entertaining film. This is one story teller Bollywood can really look forward to...