Big Girls Don't Cry Season 1 Review: Pooja Bhatt and Avantika Vandanapu's Coming-of Age Series Doesn't Soar Above Its Ordinary Writing (LatestLY Exclusive)

Big Girls Don't Cry Season 1 Review: Nitya Mehra's Big Girls Don't Cry is a coming-of-age drama series set in an all-girls boarding school and is about friendships, heartbreaks, redemptions, and seeking out your identity, be it in your sexual expression or in finding your place in the society. In between, there is also chatter about corporate corruption and censorship of art. The 'Big Girls' are played by a lovely set of actors with a natural flair for dramatics. All in all, Big Girls Don't Cry should have been a banger of a show. Disappointingly, it isn't. Big Girls Don’t Cry OTT Streaming Date and Time: Here’s When and Where To Watch Pooja Bhatt’s Series Online!

Let's talk about the plot first. The series is set in a strictly run Vandana Valley Girls School, headed by its Dean Anita Verma (Pooja Bhatt), which is prepping itself for its 75th anniversary celebration. Most of the students of the school come from privileged families, and those few who aren't are scholarship students like Kavya Yadav (Vidushi); Kavya, at first, was set up as the audience's POV into the school, but later turns out, that isn't the case. The girls there may not speak good grammar, but they insist everyone should be updated with the lingo, and everyone gets a nickname - whether they like it or not.

The show mostly revolves around a friendly gang of girls who call themselves 'Big Girls Don't Cry' or BGDC. Whether they named themselves inspired by the namesake song (which one—'Fergie' or 'The Four Seasons'?), I am not sure, but you can rest assured that these girls have plenty of opportunities to not live up to the name.

Meet The BGDC Gang

There is Noor Hassan (Afrah Sayed), the unspoken leader of the group—a girl with serious ambitions to be the next school captain, but that doesn't incite her to put a rein on her mischievous besties. She is so focused on her goal that I firmly believe her short hairstyle is her desire to emulate her dean's look. She also wants to disassociate herself from her family's legacy, especially her parents' activist ways.

Watch the Trailer of Big Girls Don't Cry:

We have Leah Joseph, aka Ludo (Avantika Vandanapu), the school's basketball captain, who is going through her own sexual identity crisis while involved in a clandestine affair with a fellow basketball player, Vidushi (Himanshi Pandey). Then there is Pluggy aka Anandita Rawat (Dalai), who writes smutty books but is herself a virgin desperate to have her first sexual encounter. Among the besties, there are two BFFs in the form of Roohi Ahuja (Aneet Padda) and JC, aka Jayshree Chhetri (Tenzin Lhakiyila), who find a common cause of bonding coming from rich but dysfunctional families.

Big Girls Don't Cry doesn't restrict itself to these girls, though. There is also Dia Malik (Akshita Sood), a rebel without a cause who uses a play conducted by their new drama teacher Aliya (Zoya Hussain) to channel her defiant energy. A couple more girls get to lead their own stories here.

Cliques With The Cliches

Big Girls Don't Cry keeps moving around each of these plotlines, making sure the pacing is never stagnant. This is all good, but the plotlines don't come with good writing while feeling very familiar, as if the makers try to add every romcom or high-school drama trope in there.

Take Kavya, for example, who gets this Mean Girls track (funnily, Avantika was in the recent Mean Girls remake). She is besotted with getting into the BGDC clique, and when she does, it corrupts her morally and also affects her studies. However, I did not feel compelled to understand her desire to be part of this one clique since BGDC felt like one of many in that school.

Also, the moral degradation of the character is flimsily done with no proper reasoning for it to happen. The group has a girl who wants to be the next head girl, and another is the basketball captain, so why would that even happen? It's a stereotypical (and problematic) manner of telling the rich could corrupt you, which makes little sense when you are already in a school that serves rich students. Also, there are scenes where Kavya owns up to her Kendriya Vidyalaya schooling, so I am not very sure why she needs to lie about her family not being as privileged as her friends.

Mujhse Dosti Karoge?

That are just a couple of the many writing inconsistencies I found with the show, which, while has its charming moments (the songs are also pleasant to hear), doesn't rise above the ordinariness. There is a Mujhse Dosti Karoge-inspired love triangle involving Roohi and JC, which leads to some heavy drama ahead but could have been easily solved with just one conversation. Also, for a show that screams about the assertion of women's individuality, it sure used a lot of drama around a boy putting his mark on a girl by placing a necktie around her, but without calling the practice out. Mean Girls' Avantika Vandanapu Had Once Acted With Mahesh Babu, Mohanlal and Ravi Teja; Here's All You Need to Know About Hollywood's New Indian Origin Actress!

Big Girls Need Better Writing...

The biggest problem is these characters evolve only just a little bit beyond their tropes, and their individual traits become annoying after a point. I would have understood Noor's reasoning for being away from her legacy and her parents' activism. Still, when we are told that she is doing so to avoid the Islamaphobia attached to her surname, it becomes stupid. Not the 'Islamophobia' part, but that she is silly enough to think just dropping her surname might work wonders for her, never mind that 'Noor' still sounds like a Muslim name.

Similarly, for Dia, whose impulsive nature leads to troubles for the school play, it is not wrong to have a character that is anti-system, but when that isn't supported with good reasoning, it ceases to be a character worth sympathising with. You are just dealing with a brat here, who refuses to grow and who has simply no clue about the repercussions of her actions, even when they are told very clearly to her.

Every fight and every makeup after that fight feels drama for drama's sake, and that doesn't make for good storytelling.

... And Editing

Even the editing seems way off, especially when you move from one episode to another. Certain scenes are omitted, and we are only shown the aftermath - like Ludo and Vidushi's kiss that becomes a scandal at this school - but it feels more confusing when you don't exactly see how that happened as if the show itself wants to self-censor stuff (a thing that it later calls out).

The track later becomes the crux of the finale episode, but when you don't put the mainstays of the plotline in the forefront, it loses the impetus. If you can spend an entire episode where you show girls lose their way during camping and then get stoned on some wild berries in what is some very contrived storytelling, why not use that time to pad up storylines with stuff that adds depth to character arcs?

But 'Big Girls' Are Themselves Awesome!

What works for the show are the performances. Each actor has been well-cast, especially the students. Avantika Vandanapu (a far cry from her breakout role in the Mean Girls remake), Aneet Padda, Akshita Sood, Dalai, Vidushi, Tenzin Lhakyila, and Afrah Sayed breathe life into their weakly-written roles; even the ones in the more supporting capacity, including Manjoree Kar,  Bodhisattva Sharma (of All India Rank fame), Aditya Raj leave a mark. Big Girls Don't Cry would have lost even the little sheen it possessed without these wonderful young performers.

PS: I understand that the show deals with girls at an age dealing with their hormones, but scenes of them checking out a man's rear come across as more creepy than intended, especially when you also include a teacher doing the same.

Final Thoughts on Big Girls Don't Cry

Big Girls Don't Cry could have been a charming showcase of friendships and coming-of-age tales, and it does maintain that impression to some extent, largely due to the show's laid-back vibe and the performances of the lead actresses. However, lacking robust writing and editing support, the series often loses momentum, failing to transcend its familiar storylines. The first season of Big Girls Don't Cry is available to stream on Prime Video.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 14, 2024 02:43 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).