Preeti Syal (瑞 娣)

At the outset, YOLO (2024) looks like just another movie about societal standards of beauty and body image wrapped in an underdog woman boxer’s saga; it might remind many of Million Dollar Baby or Japanese’ 100 Yen (the movie they claim to be an adaptation of). And yet, the movie has done outrageously well. YOLO grossed $479.5 million worldwide, making it the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2024. Despite sounding like a story told a million times, YOLO creates a powerful portrayal of transformation and independence — Du Leying, the movie’s protagonist, yearns for acceptance, love, and respect, believing that being nice will get her all three. Although the plot has its flaws as to how she doesn’t help her parents or family out in housework or family business — I am not sure how that plays into the ‘being nice’ narrative — but one ends up ignoring that seeing the actor put in so much effort to go through an actual transformation. Although I don’t believe in weight loss as a stamp of change, it is probably the first thing everyone notices — and so a visible loss of 50 kilograms during the filming of this movie has earned the actor/director immense appreciation worldwide. Underlying this physical transformation is a giant mental leap that starts with a tiny measure of defining what success meant for her; not the societal definitions, not what her family expected from her. Wholly cognizant of the assumed norms around success—money, fame, power, and respect in varying degrees depending on which socio-economic brush it had been painted against — she went ahead and redefined it all, until it made sense to her. There is nothing extraordinarily earth-shattering in that message. Only, the way she does it. In a world hungry for validation, recognition, fame, money, and sometimes survival, what she was trying to do may seem trivial to many. A small, perhaps insufficient rift from who she was. Now, a low-earning waitress able to earn her spot in a boxing match, only to lose — doesn't sound like a success story by any standards. And yet, when she says ‘I have already won’ after the match where she fell to the ground multiple times and lost, you feel happy for her. Her contentment and composed integrity are inspiring, to say the least. So, watch the movie and ask yourself this: Have You Ever Dug Your Claws & Truly Fought? Winning or not is secondary — that you put up a fight is all that matters.

Let's see -- should you ever watch this movie in a theater? No! Because the movie is excruciatingly long and heavily patriarchal, you would want to be able to skip most of it! Deepika Padukone who wielded a sword while carrying her baby in one arm, in Bajirao Mastani is portrayed as just another pregnant woman who needs men to save her every step of the way. Ridiculous grandeur to Prabhas and Amitabh and the ridiculous reduction of Deepika to be just a 'Maa'. Sanskar and history are added to justify this patriarchal portrayal and the nonsensical screen time given to Prabhas. There is a bit of a novelty in the storyline and the visuals are finally great for a sci-fi born out of India - so, I would give the creators credit for that. But that's mostly about it!

I am not sure why was this movie even needed.