”One Crazy Night” films are a cornerstone of modern cinema. Following characters over the course of one single night, the trope is supposed to feature high stakes and an explosive plot. The latest entry into the sub-genre is from Netflix India; is Friday Night Plan propulsive enough to be worthy of your time?
The Gist: Following the death of their father, Sid (Babil Khan) and Adi (Amrith Jayan) Menon are outcasts at school, cheering from the literal bench and the sidelines at the school soccer game instead of being part of the action themselves. Things change when Sid scores a game-winning goal and is invited to the Friday Night Plan party that all of the seniors are going to. Their single mom (‘90s Bollywood legend Juhi Chawla) leaves for a work trip that very weekend, leaving one single rule: do not drive the car. Of course, they do to impress a girl and finally bond with each other, but when things go awry, Sid and Adi have to decide how to make things right before their mom comes back.
What Will It Remind You Of?: The film’s plot will remind you of Superbad, as a nerd comes out of his shell by going to a cool party but takes part in a plethora of shenanigans along the way. But it should be noted that Friday Night Plan is not a laugh-out-loud comedy, let alone a raunchy one like the 2007 film was, so calibrate your expectations accordingly.
Performance Worth Watching: Amrith Jayan plays the younger and looser brother Adi who butts heads often with his by-the-book elder sibling. Jayan portrays Adi’s excitement about the party with ease, and when he betrays Sid later in the film, you can’t help but feel sympathetic for both parties. Chawla is also sweet as their mother, but has a very limited role in the film.
Memorable Dialogue: Sid’s biggest flaw is that he’s a perfectionist and not a risk-taker, which is exemplified best by his inability to commit to colleges to apply to, let alone attend. “We’ll discuss schools in Europe, Africa and even penguin schools in Antarctica,” his counselor says before forcing him to do what he’s been trying to avoid: talk to his mom about his fears.
Sex and Skin: Despite being a teen movie, there is nothing explicit to see here.
Our Take: As far as a coming of age film goes, Friday Night Plan is quite entertaining, though it’s not exactly reinventing the wheel. The trope of uncool friends (or siblings) finding their way to the party of the year is well-tread ground, and the urban Indian setting doesn’t add a ton of new insight other than showing brown teens drinking and playing beer pong—something we haven’t been entirely accustomed to with mainstream media.
Where the film has an opportunity to excel is its depiction of grief, and writer/director Vatsal Neelakantan has a subtle touch in showing how each member of the Menon family are dealing with the loss of their patriarch. Friday Night Plan leaves something to be desired when it comes to how much of that journey we see: main character Sid’s grief manifests in pursuit of the perfect college stemming from his fear of leaving his mother alone, but that feeling is only mentioned in one passing scene. Meanwhile, his brother Adi seems unaware about the struggles of his single mother until the very end, and his growth is only connected to that realization instead of any internal or personal ones.
Another parallel to Hollywood’s Superbad is an extended sequence with a cop, though Friday Night Plan’s version is much less playful than what came before. The sequence, in which Sid and Adi are roped into a prank with a rival school that accidentally pinpoints an officer, lacks heft and urgency in their story, and the cop’s focus on revenge feels short-sighted.
Both the dialogue and the acting are fine, and the film veers into Bollywood territory with an inexplicable song-and-dance number at the end disguised as party karaoke, which is accompanied by Khan’s discombobulated lip sync, though the song is quite good. The two female characters in the film don’t get much to do, but there is a good twist in the romantic arc between the characters.
Ultimately, there isn’t much to recommend with Friday Night Plan — especially since it feels like so much of it has been pulled from other films in the genre that do it better.
Our Call: SKIP IT. While the film is a perfectly fine timepass, it lacks any sort of spark to make it rise above or stand out from other teen coming-of-age stories.
Radhika Menon (@menonrad) is a TV-obsessed writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared on Paste Magazine, Teen Vogue, Vulture and more. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.