Mumbai: One of the best things about Arjun Varain Singh’s Kho Gaye Hum Kahan, starring Siddhant Chaturvedi, Ananya Panday and Adarsh Gourav, is that it does not pretend to be something it is not. What it is, is the story of three 20-somethings, stuck in life, and under the heavy influence of social media.
The protagonists of Kho Gaye Hum Kahan, directed by debutant Arjun Varain Singh from a script he wrote with Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti, are digital natives struggling to stay abreast of, and cope with, the real world.
Their impulses and actions, both private and public, are mediated, or directly impacted, by social media. On the face of it, their life, as reflected through the tints and filters of their reels and posts, brims with fun and games.
The movie focuses on Imaad (Siddhant Chaturvedi), a stand-up comic who spends his free time, rummaging through Tinder for his next date, Ahana (Ananya Panday) whose boyfriend asks for a break and vanishes from her life, and Neil (Adarsh Gourav), a gym instructor who, convinced that he has a below-par life, wants to make it big. Imaad and Ahana are flatmates too. Imaad, Ahana and Neil have been friends since school and plan to take the next step to become business partners. But social media is a tough nut to crack, that more often than not sends its users into a spiral.
Kho Gaye Hum Kahan, a moderately entertaining and occasionally perceptive Netflix film produced by Excel Entertainment and Tiger Baby, covers familiar ground but succeeds to a significant degree in giving the coming-of-age genre a fresh and coherent spin.
Kho Gaye Hum Kahan is focused squarely on the turmoil unfolding in Imaad, Ahana and Neil’s individual cocoons. Secrets, inadequacies, heartbreak and disasters stalk the three.
Kho Gaye Hum Kahan is Arjun Varain Singh’s directorial debut, and has been written by Singh along with Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti. It has been produced by Zoya Akhtar, Reema Kagti, Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar.
