Girls Hostel 2.0 Review: Excellent Storytelling And Fine Performances Make This Trip Down Memory Lane An Entertaining Watch

Girls Hostel 2.0 Review: Having stayed in girls' hostels for the better part of my academic life, I will irrevocably vouch for the genuineness of the second season of TVF's Girls Hostel. Although medical and dental college hostels are a completely different ball game, women, issues, struggles and challenges are always similar. Even the reason for merrymaking is wildly common. That's one of the reasons from several others that compels me to strongly recommend it. Gullak 2 Review: The Bickering Mishra Family Returns With More Middle-Class Issues In This Endearing And Heartwarming Web Series.

All the girls from the previous season are back with some new problems this time. The dental female students have been shifted to a separate hostel, thanks to the scheming Dean Sarla Desai (Jayati Bhatia), while Ramya Mantri (Shreya Mehta) buys her way into the College presidency. The new facility hardly has any facility, the biggest problem being water shortage. Jo (Srishti Srivastava) is completely detached from everyone in the hostel. Richa (Ahsaas Channa) has a boyfriend now in Aarav (Gagan Arora, who is a medical student while she is a dental student, a huge controversy always). Zahira (Parul Gulati) decides to fight for all the injustice on her hostel mates and so on. The second season focuses on College president elections and the extremes people go to win the throne. The fight also unravels a lot of other problems that needed solutions too.

We all love to take a trip down memory lane and reminisce about how special college days were. But what we don't, at times, realise is that the college hostel experiences of a man and a woman are completely different. Girls Hostel 2.0 does a fantastic job of bringing it out with accurate depictions. The fact that there's always a chai ki tapri (tea shop) just opposite a girls' hostel that invariably becomes an ogling destination for creeps, deans policing women to dress better to prevent getting teased by men loitering outside the girls' hostels, a constant plot of men to somehow break into the hostel to see 'ladkiyan girls hostel mein karti kya hai.' (What do girls do in hostels?). Often men fondly reminisce about the time they sneaked into a girls' hostel. What's fun for them is horrifying for those girls. The series shows it spectacularly.

Shreyasi Sharma, Anant Singh Bhaatu, Prashant Kumar and Swasti Jain have definitely done their homework well. What's refreshing and perhaps novel to see here is that they have used dialogues of movies to convey their messages rather than mentioning the movies. You all are familiar with the customised anecdotes at the beginning of the episodes but even the characters use them wisely. Like, for example, when the warden laments that the Dean is like Kanoon (law) and someone asks, "Aandhi?" One-liners like this land so well that you can't help but rave about them. In fact, Girls Hostel 2.0 might actually make you realise that Geet's 'Main apni favourite hoon' could be problematic too. Kadakh Movie Review: Rajat Kapoor Serves an Engaging, Well-Performed Black Comedy With a Hitchcockian Flair.

Special mention for including Ram Gopal Varma's Shiva in the dialogue structure. It's such a rare find in any content today because not many have watched that classic and also because the director has gone quite weird these days.

But yes, there are a few errors that couldn't be overlooked. The 'Girls Hostel View Point' board is overselling the whole subplot. It is made amply clear in the series that the tea shop is a spot for the same. Subtlety should have been the key here. Also, what's the deal with a rushed opening credit roll? You can't even make out half of the names unless you hit the pause button. The last slide gets butchered mercilessly because of that. The sequence where the hostel perimeter is breached by a few men could have been easily snipped to a few minutes.

Watch the trailer of Girls Hostel 2.0

Performances obviously are exceptionally good. Shrishti as the brash and straight-talker Jo is fascinating and so is the poise personified Zahira or Parul Gulati. The latter brings out the rich girl nuances so accurately while also being righteous. Ahsaas Channa and Gaurav Arora are always a delight to watch and so are the incredible yet sly Jayati Bhatia as dean and the wily yet supportive Warden Trupti Khamkar. Shreya Mehta could have been a great opponent but she falls short at many accounts.

Yay!

- Superb storytelling

- Brilliant performances

- Amazing one-liners

Nay!

- Butchered opening  credits

- Stating the obvious a little too much

Final Thoughts

Whether you have watched season 1 or not, Girls Hostel 2.0 has something for every gender even when its protagonists are mostly females. This must be on your watchlist if you value some old memories. Girls Hostel 2.0 will stream on SonyLIV from February 19.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 19, 2021 10:00 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).