Youth (2026) Roast

For his directorial debut, Ken Karunas has written himself the kind of role where:

• Girls confess their love unprompted.
• Boys start fights over him in corridors.
• A loyal group of friends gathers around purely to witness his life unfold.

Set in the 2014-16 period, Youth follows Praveen (Ken Karunas) from his 10th board results, which he barely scrapes through, to a string of crushes and breakups that feel cheesy and forced.

One line review: Youth is part of a "PR template" (referring to filmmaker Pradeep Ranganathan’s style) where toxic behavior is glorified throughout the film only to be "corrected" by a moralizing climax.

Why Youth Didn’t Work for Me — Even as Mindless Entertainment

I went into Youth expecting nothing more than a dumb, time-pass entertainer. You know the type: school romance, a few jokes, some drama, maybe a redemption arc. I wasn’t expecting realism, depth, or social commentary. The bar was already on the floor. And somehow, the movie still managed to trip over it.

Let’s start with our hero — who is basically introduced as a “mini playboy” in school. Not in a self-aware, comedic way. Not in a “he’ll learn and grow” way. No. The film actually frames this as charm.

He maintains a weird emotional hierarchy with girls — one girl is treated like a backup emotional support system while he’s in a “serious” relationship with another. The movie never really questions this behavior. It just… rolls with it.

At one point, he literally justifies not rejecting a girl by saying he didn’t want to “hurt her.”
Ah yes, the classic logic: lying, leading someone on, and wasting their time is kinder than honesty.

What a gentleman.

Then comes the revenge arc, which is where the movie completely lost me. After an interval twist exposes the hero’s own dishonesty, you’d expect accountability, right? Growth? Self-reflection?

Consequences?

Nope. The second half is basically him trying to take revenge on the girl. And the most bizarre part? The film still frames him as being right. The narrative bends over backwards to justify him, even though he’s objectively the one who messed up in the first place.

It’s like the movie is terrified of admitting its hero is wrong.

Then we get to the female characters, which honestly feel like they were written sometime in 1998 and never updated. 

Most of the girls are portrayed as naïve, lacking independent thought, and existing mainly to admire, fight over, or be manipulated by the hero.

 There’s also a very obvious color bias — all the love interests are extremely fair-skinned, while the only noticeably dark-skinned, overweight girl in the crowd is conveniently framed as the villain. Subtle as a brick.

And then comes my favorite part — the miracle exam climax.

This guy spends his entire school life doing everything except studying: chasing girls, getting into drama, causing chaos, and generally behaving like academics are optional. 

But suddenly, near the end, he studies for one week and gets 9th rank in the 12th-grade exams. One week. That’s all it takes. Apparently, the entire Indian education system could be solved with a montage and a sad background song.

This academic miracle is then used to pivot the film into parental sentiment mode, as if scoring marks suddenly erases all the terrible behavior from the first two hours. It feels less like character growth and more like the script desperately trying to clean up its own mess.

What bothered me more than anything, though, is the normalization of toxic behavior.

The movie treats stalking, body shaming, mocking people’s looks, and general harassment as comedy or “hero attitude.” In older movies, these traits were usually given to villains or comic side characters. 

Now they’re packaged as heroism — as long as the hero cries about his parents in the last 10 minutes, everything is forgiven.

That’s the formula now:

Harass girls + insult people + act irresponsibly for two hours → mention parents → redemption → mass hero.

And honestly, that’s what worries me. Movies like this are extremely appealing to school and college audiences because they make bad behavior look cool and consequence-free. 

The message becomes: You can behave terribly, but as long as you’re the hero, the story will justify you.

The only genuinely positive thing I’ll say about the film is that it gave opportunities to new talent — especially young creators from Instagram and YouTube. Many of them actually performed well and brought natural energy to the screen. They deserved a better script.

In the end, Youth is not just a bad movie — it’s a PR template movie.
A formula designed to manufacture a “relatable mass hero” by mixing school life, romance, toxic behavior, fake redemption, and parental sentiment.

It wants the audience to laugh, cheer, and forgive.
I just sat there wondering why the movie wanted me to root for someone who never really learned anything.

If this is what passes for a “youth entertainer,” this is dangerous.