Have you heard this one before? A man and a woman are spending some time in a pool where they fail to notice that the water level is getting lower and lower. Once stuck at the bottom, with no easy way to get back out, they then end up facing the extra danger of a big crocodile. Yes, this is a remake of The Pool (2018), and I was happy to be aware of that before selecting it as my main Netflix feature choice for this week. I enjoyed The Pool when I saw it, but it felt as if there were a number of extraneous moments that worked against the simplicity of the idea.
Tu Yaa Main, on the other hand, benefits from being an Indian movie release, which means I expect more to be packed in there. I am always happy to admit my failings and blind spots, and would in no way label myself an expert on Indian cinema (despite having seen a few treats from Bollywood, Tollywood, and possibly some other "woods"), but they often certainly pack in a greater mix of elements than movies from elsewhere. You get conflict, you get romance, you get a highlighted song or two, there's maybe some action, and you get some commentary on class and status. Tu Yaa Main has all of those things throughout the 143-minute runtime, and it somehow feels all the better for it.
Adarsh Gourav is Maruti Kadam and Shanaya Kapoor is Avani Shah. Both of them are content creators, one being a rapper and the other being a well-liked influencer. Despite their very different backgrounds, when they finally start collaborating on social media then they start to develop a relationship. Things seem to keep getting in their way though, whether it's the huge gap between their socio-economic states or . . . a hungry crocodile.
Written by Abhisek Arun Bandekar (and Himanshu Sharma and Aanand L Rai), based on the 2018 film, this is an enjoyable and engaging exploration of a relationship that moves back and forth in time to keep teasing out the main croc problem in between the highs and lows of everyday life. Director Bejoy Nambiar keeps everything nice and neat when it comes to the various characters, and the many time jumps are easy to keep track of because, well, most of the depicitons of the present take place in and around the swimming pool. It maybe runs out of steam slightly while the third act plays out, especially when a potential escape plan is considered, but the overall experience is one of solid entertainment.
Both Gourav and Kapoor are eminently watchable, and both have great chemistry with one another. I'm not going to pretend that I kept track of everyone else onscreen, but they're all very good at portraying the mix of friends and family around the two leads, as well as one possible life-saving cop (Shrikant Yadav). The crocodile is another key character though, and I'm pleased to say that a variety of techniques were blended together to ensure it always looks real enough (including risky scenes when it actually IS real, despite the director being warned against that approach).
Because people will ultimately choose this for the croc content, it won't satisfy everyone who makes time for it. I had some idea of what to expect going in, which allowed me to be pleasantly surprised when expanding the story and the runtime helped it to become much better than a film I notably criticised for unnecessarily padding out scenes around a brilliantly simple central idea.
8/10
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