Yaatris is the perfect recipe of how not to make a film because it is endlessly boring, unfunny, and tiring.
Director: Harish Vyas
Cast: Raghubir Yadav, Seema Pahwa, Jamie Lever, Anuraag Malhan, and Chahatt Khanna
Where to watch: Theatres
Rating: 1 star
Dysunctional family dramas is a genre not much explored well in Bollywood. A few examples, such as Dil Dhadakne Do and Kapoor & Sons have owned this space. But, the most recent dysunctional family drama Yaatris fails at each and every step, right from the ideation to the execution.
The Harish Vyas directorial centres on the Sharmas, a middle-class family living in Benaras. Pushkar Sharma and Saroj Sharma, (Raghubir Yadav and Seema Pahwa respectively), are parents to Meenu Sharma and Maahi Sharma, played by Jamie Lever and Anuraag Malhan. Chahatt Khanna plays Maahi's ex and is just there for two scenes.
Pushkar works at a private pathology lab and is just a few days away from his retirement. Saroj sells bedsheets door-to-door, but her consumers now prefer to buy this stuff from online shopping sites. Meenu sells insurance and works from home, and Maahi wants to be a builder but is not doing anything to achieve his mission. The Sharmas are worried about theit finances and are constantly nagging each other for it. When Pushkar gets a payment of Rs 9 lakh from his PPF fund after his retirement, he books tickets for a family trip to Bangkok without consulting his wife or children. They go to Bangkok and they try to understand each other in this forced family trip.
As their bonds get better, their mother says, "Isse pehle toh hum sirf rishtedaar the, parivaar ab hue hain (We were just relatives earlier, now we are becoming a family)", we wonder when Yaatris even made us believe that they are related to each other. The films leads to a surprising twist in the climax, which comes out of nowhere and becomes the very reason of them uniting with each other. This twist, just like the entire narrative, is completely pointless and stupid.
This family drama is devoid of emotions as there is no sense of belongingness with the Sharmas. Because neither the storytelling works, nor the performances. I couldn't relate to any of the characters because they simply have no depth in them. The dialogues, which were written with the intention to tug at a viewers' heart, take you back to the 1970s and are simply cringeworthy.
Leaving the story and the Sharmas aside, the film even fails to work as a good tourism ad for Bangkok. The Thailand capital, known for its vibrant streetlife, looks completely dead on screen. The film proves that even talented actors like Seema Pahwa and Raghubir Yadav need good director, writer, and technicians to show their acting craft on the screen.
Yaatris is the perfect recipe of how not to make a film because it is endlessly boring, unfunny, and tiring. If you are planning to take yaatra to go a theatre to watch this film, please don't. In fact, it would have been a lot better if the Sharmas themselves woulnd't have taken this yaatra from Benaras to Bangkok.
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 "Yaatris movie review")
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