What Is the Story About?
Prime Video India original series ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ is a coming-of-age young adult drama, set in the backdrop of a snooty all-girls boarding school in scenic Ooty.
Through diverse characters, the series lays bare teenaged angst in boarding schools, and their myriad issues, as they navigate puberty and its accompanying explosion of hormones, unrequited crushes, same-sex love, identity crises, dysfunctional families, trying to fit in with the cool crowd, and more.
Big Girls Don’t Cry is written by Sudhanshu Saria, Adwitiya Kareng Das, Sunayana Kumari and Radhika Malhotra, created by Nitya Mehra, directed by Mehra, Sudhanshu Saria, Karan Kapadia and Kopal Naithani, and produced by Ashi Dua Sara and Karan Kapadia.
Performances?
The performances in Big Girls Don’t Cry are excellent across the board. The young actors that form the teenaged boarding school girls are all terrific in every aspect – be it expressiveness, effusiveness, earnestness, naturalness, effective delivery of dialogue, and more – each actor nails their respective roles and characterisations.
Vidushi as scholarship student Kavya; Avantika Vandanapu as in-the-closet sports captain Leah ‘Ludo’ Joseph; Afrah Sayed as teacher’s pet and school topper Noor; Tenzin Lhakliya as the burdened scion of a Nepalese royal family; Aneet Padda as the poor little rich girl Roohi; Dalai as the dimwitted budding porn writer Anandita ‘Pluggy’ Rawat; Akshita Sood as the rebellious ‘Demented’ Dia Malik; Manjoree Kar as debating ace Manjoree; and Himanshi Pandey as Ludo’s love interest Vidushi, all steal the show at some point or the other in the series.
The older cast members are on-point too. Pooja Bhatt is excellent as always in her role as the straitjacket principal, Anita Verma. Loveleen Mishra is effective as Miss Jeanette. Tanya Abrol, Suchitra Pillai and Zoya Hussain are good in their respective faculty roles. Raima Sen, Mukul Chadda, Pavleen Gujral, Khalid Siddiqui, among others, leave a mark in their ultra-short appearances.
Analysis
On the surface, Prime Video India’s ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ seems like a desi clone of Netflix’s seminal young adult show, ‘Sex Education’. There’s also a bit of Harry Potter-esque drama and equations thrown into the mix. You settle down to watch the supposedly wannabe show with a decidely prejudiced cynical outlook.
However, by the end of the first episode itself, you realise how wrong you were to judge the book by the cover. For, you soon realise that Big Girls Don’t Cry is quite a well-made and watchable show. Except for a couple of meandering episodes in between, it keeps you pretty much hooked for the most part of the runtime. Coming as it does from Nitya Mehra, one of the directors of Made In Heaven Season 2, you expect nothing less.
The most commendable aspect of the show’s writing is that it allows every character to shine and stand out, even if it’s only for a short period of the runtime. The spotlight is never on just a couple of primary characters – every character is but an engaging part of an interesting whole. The performances of the young and promising cast of Big Girls Don’t Cry breathe life into the show, lending credence and conviction to the myriad characters that inhabit the story, getting us invested in their goings-on.
The biggest flaw in the series is the over-busy plot and too many subplots that mess with the attention span of the viewer. The writers seem to have prepared a check-list of issues they want to address in the series; and they go about doing it with clinical precision. So we have a closeted same-sex love; a girl who wants to smash the patriarchy; another girl itching to lose her virginity; one who aspires to study further in the US and wants to lose her Muslim surname, purportedly due to the Islamophobic discrimination in US universities; a rich girl with parents stuck in a sham of a marriage; and more. After a while, everything starts to feel too repetitive, contrived and tropey to leave a lasting impact.
The most interesting subplot is that of Kavya, an underprivileged “scholly” student who hides her reality from the privileged bunch of girls in the snooty school. She’s also a “dalit”, as one sequence suggests – a parent at the school’s PTA meeting asks her if her surname is ‘Jadav’ or ‘Yadav’ – the crucial difference between being an OBC and an upper class person. Sadly, the writers refuse to go deeper into the subplot, squandering the chance to address the raging reservations vs anti-reservations debate in the country.
The tediously long runtime of the series is another major drawback. At 50-60 minutes for each episode, the 7-episode series is a marathon watch that really tests your patience. It is also inconsistent in tone and tempo, ebbing and flowing in intermittent bursts of action, oscillating between a flurry of gravitas or frivolity. One whole episode is wasted on the girls’ fluke encounter with narcotic berries in the home of an eccentric bohemian lady (Dolly Ahluwalia, in a cameo).
To sum it up, too many subplots render the narrative messy and all over the place. A tighter script could have elevated the story by several notches. That said, Big Girls Don’t Cry is good for a one-time watch, especially for the younger crowd.
Music and Other Departments?
Amit Trivedi’s title track for Big Girls Don’t Cry is lovely and listenable. It is soft and soothing, setting the perfect tempo for the storytelling. Kabir Tejpal’s cinematography captures the rolling countryside of small town India well. Dipika Kalra and Paromita Ghosh’s editing is decent, though could have been crisper to avoid the rough edges.
Highlights?
The terrific cast – almost every fresh-faced young actor is a standout
The superb characterisations – well-written, which gradually grow on you
Drawbacks?
Too long and meandering
Too many subplots stuffed into it
Tropey and contrived at times
Did I Enjoy It?
Only in parts
Will You Recommend It?
Only for the younger crowd
Big Girls Don’t Cry Series Review by Binged Bureau
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