Suggested Topics :
‘Raat Jawaan Hai’ Review: A Heartening Update on the Modern Buddy Movie
The feel-goodness of Raat Jawaan Hai is an organic product of its environment, but it has no neat resolutions or reckonings. Unlike in most young-adult stories, no conflict is curated; not everything is a lifequake.
Director: Sumeet Vyas
Writers: Khyati Anand-Puthran, Anirban Dasgupta (additional dialogue)
Cast: Anjali Anand, Barun Sobti, Priya Bapat, Hasleen Kaur, Priyansh Jora, Vikram Singh Chauhan
Streaming on: Sony LIV
Language: Hindi
Raat Jawaan Hai unfolds as an uncharacteristically warm and vibrant answer to a question popular Hindi cinema is too streamlined to ask: what happens after the end credits of the quintessential buddy comedy have rolled? Call it “Little Things for young parents” or “Dil Chahta Hai for reluctant adults”, but the fact that Raat Jawaan Hai fuses two seemingly exclusive genres of life — the friendship triangle and the marital drama — is, in itself, a minor triumph.
The eight-episode series revolves around three 30-something childhood friends struggling to reclaim their individualism in the throes of early parenthood. It trusts the inherent relatability of its theme, evoking the slice-of-life subgenre of Tu Hai Mera Sunday (2017) rather than the cosmetic excesses of Four More Shots Please! and Jee Karda (2023). The innuendo of the title (which translates to “the night is young”) is a nifty pun because it best embodies the spirit of adulting. With age comes the sobriety of realising that it actually means: “This is only the beginning”.
Avinash (Barun Sobti) is the chill one: a stay-at-home dad coping with his own subversions of masculinity and self-worth. Radhika (Anjali Anand) is the hot-headed one: a stay-at-home mom desperate to transcend the label of a “housewife”. Suman (Priya Bapat) is the timid one: a conservative homemaker grappling with issues of self-expression and intimacy. The one thing they share — apart from a formative bond and working spouses — is the deep-set exhaustion of being new parents. Their existence is determined by the suspense of a sleeping baby. Avinash and his wife Swadha (Hasleen Kaur) race against time and baby monitors to consummate their lust, but the result is a series of failed sexcapades. The only romance that Suman and husband Sattu (Vikram Singh Chauhan) can afford is a sweet touch-up — he adjusts his turban; she wears something nice — before he rings the doorbell every evening. Radhika and her husband Rishi (Priyansh Jora) resort to orgasmic head massages to reward each other for being thoughtful.
Raat Jawaan Hai draws out its maturity instead of flaunting it. It lives in the cracks of storytelling, not the cement. The series retains a sense of perspective without sacrificing its levity. It’s not just the lived-in banter, the comfort of their cussing and the unvarnished chemistry. None of the characters are social crutches; they’re very human. Avi is a harmless flirt and Radhika mothers him around pretty women. Radhika is a bit of a bully, and the writing doesn’t conceal her flaws; her main-character energy is so strong that she yells at others for “hijacking [her] crisis”. Suman and Avi have some history, but the series resists the urge to overplay this angle. In this age of political correctness, it doesn’t judge Suman’s in-laws and their archaic ideals; this is her reality, for better or worse, and the message is embedded in her hesitance to settle.
More importantly, Raat Jawaan Hai has no neat resolutions or reckonings. Unlike in most young-adult stories, no conflict is curated; not everything is a lifequake. Suman’s showdown with her husband happens at 6 am on a Sunday. His first reaction, however, is the total inability to fathom the time and place of this argument; “Why now?” is all he can manage. When they agree to work on their marriage, her friends assume that she has finally had sex after months. But, her reply — that they went on a coffee date — is disarming; it acknowledges that years of repression cannot be undone overnight, even if the nature of storytelling suggests otherwise. When one of them talks about why they stopped having birthday parties, the flashback isn’t overdramatic; it’s an unassuming childhood incident. That’s often the case — the most traumatic memories needn’t be the most visible ones. When Avi’s baby falls ill minutes before he leaves for a presentation, he isn’t painted as a victim who can’t catch a break. Avi misses the meeting; he moves on. The moment passes.
That’s the perceptive thing about the parents. They yearn for the minute their kids fall asleep, but this “chore” becomes the best part of their day. I like that there are tensions and resentments, and blind spots; these people are who they are. One of the episodes features the three friends taking a road trip to pick up a potential nanny from her village. After some rural misadventures, they are racked with upper-caste guilt for hiring a mother who must leave her own children behind. When a pained Radhika flexes her urban saviour muscles, she is told to be practical because “this is not Twitter”. The episode doesn’t offer a solution; it ends without really ending.
Similarly, there’s a rare wobble in the penultimate episode — where an overworked food delivery agent becomes a punchline — but the recovery is quick. I also like that the spouses are largely absent until the last two episodes (a weekend getaway), which accurately reflects their role as breadwinners. Otherwise, most films play up this gap only to show both partners spending an equal amount of time at home.
The feel-goodness of Raat Jawaan Hai is an organic product of its environment. On one hand, the Mumbai-ness is barely a factor (those open spaces and balconies gave me palpitations). On the other hand, this allows the narrative to be a Mumbai story without conforming to the stereotypes of one. Instead, it’s in the easygoing and multicultural vibe, the safety of late-night strolls in pyjamas, the nonchalant gazes, the khadoos attitudes, and the endless anxiety of striving for more because nothing feels enough. The tiny touches make all the difference.
Take, for example, a scene where the friends are so fixated on Suman’s dry sex life that they are oblivious to a ‘rocking’ car they walk past. Or a low-key Sholay joke: Suman is caught dancing to a song by her mother-in-law, only for us to learn later that the old woman’s name is Dharam. Or my favourite detail: a man — a sports physiotherapist — shadow-practices a cricket stroke and winces when he recalls why the condom didn’t work that night. His wicket has fallen.
Evidently, the everyday humour doesn’t try too hard. Even the low-hanging-fruit gags — a guy accidentally drinking tea containing his wife’s breast milk; a boomer using a vibrator as a neck massager; a tipsy husband covering his nose when he hears of his wife’s positive pregnancy test — work because of the excellent cast. A lot of emphasis is placed on the casting of the bit roles. From Avi’s foul-mouthed friend and two power-drunk Marathi cops to a combative mom at the park and a haughty play-school principal, everyone becomes the part. Ditto for the supporting performances. As Suman’s old-fashioned but level-headed husband, Vikram Singh Chauhan stands out, especially in the scenes where you expect him to explode only for him to convey chaos through stillness. Even his patriarchy is so muted that it’s almost tender.
The lead actors don’t hit a false note. Barun Sobti plays Avinash as a seamless sequel to his Tu Hai Mera Sunday character. It’s a natural progression: the gifted MBA graduate disillusioned by corporate slavery in the film morphs into a “house-husband” who wonders if he’s using parenthood as a crutch to escape the rat race in this series. It’s a beautifully observed performance. You can tell that Avi likes to be known as the man who could have done anything but chose not to — until it isn’t sustainable anymore. He’s genuinely witty, which only makes his handful of serious moments all the more effective. Thanks to Priya Bapat, a good-girl caricature like Suman stops short of being a simpleton; her arc is perhaps the most complex of the lot because her problems aren’t as tangible as the others. She radiates the self-doubt of someone who finds her life unworthy of discussion; even her love marriage feels like an arranged one. As a result, she lives vicariously through her friends because she can’t summon the courage to be like that.
But the definitive turn comes from Anjali Anand as Radhika, the most heart-on-sleeve of the three. Anand, who played Ranveer Singh’s sister in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani (2023), stages Radhika as a rainbow of unpretentious feelings. Every time Radhika loses her cool and starts a fight, she is self-aware enough to turn her rage into an in-joke. The actress humanises the emotional loudness of the character, delivering some of the show’s funniest and saddest scenes. At one point, a weepy Radhika is so moved by Suman’s story that she soothes her with a line I expect to find on t-shirts: “Tu Suman hai, bh**ch*d”.
It’s tempting to wonder how, given their social constraints, the routine of the three pals remains sacred. They visit the kiddie park together every morning; a WhatsApp group (named ‘Raat Jawaan Hai’, of course) ensures that they hang out for a late-night smoke, ice cream or rant at the local bus stop. There are barely any economic disparities between them. This friendship-life balance is almost utopian. Do the spouses not begrudge an ‘external’ attachment that eats into their domestic identities? But the only time a partner mentions this, it sounds like someone who is resigned to the clarity of the equation. The cultural suspension of disbelief required to believe the inseparability of three friends is rooted in how they’ve followed one another into adulthood. It’s as though the second one of them got married and pregnant, the others promptly followed suit to sustain the bond — and to avoid the outgrowing that happens when friends stop sharing life stages. Avi, Radhika and Suman are so close that they’ve subconsciously synced their identities to stay close. Drifting apart is not an option.
Much of their friendship is designed to preserve this equality. The implication is that if one takes a step, the others will be left behind, and the bond will falter. Perhaps Avi has quit his career to be a progressive father, as much as a loyal friend to Radhika and Suman. But you can sense he is running out of ways to withstand societal norms; Swadha’s respect for him is diminishing. When Radhika considers going back to her ruthless corporate job, her friends are cautious. Yet, it’s not long before Radhika flirts with a part-time career; she wants to be more — more of a woman, a friend, a wife, maybe even a mother. Suman’s in-laws threaten to move into their Mumbai apartment. When Radhika scolds Suman for not having a spine, you wonder if Radhika cares for Suman or frets that their hangouts might be hampered by a joint-family setup.
At some level, they are resisting evolution out of solidarity with each other. While it seems like nothing major happens across eight episodes, the series chooses — and quietly captures — a phase where each of them is hurtling towards change. It’s almost like a friendship-survival drama of sorts. The stakes are deceptively high. The end-of-an-era vibe is palpable. There’s a T-junction ahead. The future is inevitable. After all, it’s the threat of growing up that haunts the act of being parents.