Kirik Party

Kirik Party is the story of a gang of mischievous students, led by the protagonist Karna (Rakshit Shetty), who has just joined an engineering college. They belong to different streams of engineering but develop a bond while staying together in the hostel. Karna, the protagonist from a small town has joined this engineering college as a mechanical engineering student and he gangs up with his hostel mates Loki, Alexander, Manja, and others to cause a lot of mischief in the college. During the first year, he befriends Saanvi (Rashmika Mandanna) a Final year student and certain incidents impact Karna's life making him question his very basic thought process.

The second half starts with the fun-loving girl Arya (Samyuktha Hegde), who is a student of first year Electrical engineering in the same college and falls in love with final year Mechanical engineering student Karna at the end both start to love each other.

The progression of Karna and the gang from being a bunch of mischief-makers to responsible adults is the theme of the Kirik Party. It is a fun-filled film with lots of melodious songs.

The story starts with a song introducing the characters of the film. Karna a first-year student meets Saanvi final year student and daughter of a police officer. Everyone on the campus likes Saanvi even Karna's friend. But Saanvi gets close to Karna and they both become good friends. Saanvi is a writer of a book about sex worker's life and she knows the sex worker personally. The sex worker is pregnant and one day she gets labor pain. Saanvi along with Karna takes her to the hospital. The sex worker bears a baby girl and keeps the baby's name, Saanvi. Karna holds the baby and gets emotional. Saanvi always saw Karna as a fun, loving, and cheerful guy. Seeing Karna as innocent and emotional Saanvi suggests Karna discover his second half.

They become close friends and start to go out together. In the girls' hostel, girls were celebrating the final year students' send-off party meanwhile even the boys entered the hostel and everyone started to sing and dance. The boys leave the hostel, and Saanvi and her friends decide to drink Saanvi refuses to do so but due to her friends she sips a bit of vodka. While dancing Saanvi falls from the hostel room window and dies. Karna gets upset. Everyone starts to speak about Saanvi in the wrong way even Saanvi's father gets angry about Saanvi getting drunk. Seeing all this Karna gets angry and starts to beat his senior.

After three years Karna is in his final year, and he becomes stubborn and rude. He is in the final year and Arya his junior doing her first year in electrical stream falls in love with Karna. Karna and his friends get apart due to a fight and he forms another group.

Karna stands for the college election and also wins the election and becomes president of the college. Arya wants to change Karna. She wants to make Karna as he was in the first year of college. Arya and Karna go for a long drive where Karna and Arya do some mischievous things which brings a smile to Karna's face. Arya takes Karna to Saanvi's house unknowingly. Karna sees Saanvi's parents and her photos in the house and gets emotional. Saanvi's father apologizes for not trusting his daughter and thanks Karna for the diary that he gave after Saanvi's death. Saanvi's dad gives the diary to Karna and asks him to read it. Karna leaves the house and on his way, he goes to the sex worker's house whom he and Saanvi had helped during her labor pain. Karna sees the sex worker's child and gets emotional as her name is also Saanvi. Karna leaves the house and meets Arya, she tells him that he is lost in his past and asks him to come to reality and leaves from there giving an emoji badge to him.

Karna gets stuck in Arya's words and leaves on the bike to another place. Karna decides to sell the car which he and his friends bought in the first year and give the money for the sex worker's child's education. On his trip, Karna learns that he is in love with Arya. He goes back to college. It was his final day in college. Karna writes two letters one to Arya and another one to Principal stating that he and his friends locked him in the car and blamed his other friends. In Arya's letter, he writes that he loves her and wants to be with her. Karna and his friends get back together forming the same bond as the first year. The principal forgives Karna and his friends without reading the letter. At the send-off party, Arya comes with the letter and tells Karna that he is a really good human being he accepts his mistake and asks him to give the letter to the Principal not to her. Everyone gets shocked and Karna realizes that he swapped the letter. The principal reads the letter and gets to know that Karna loves Arya, his daughter. In the end, the principal shouts at Karna.

The film has ten tracks composed by B. Ajaneesh Loknath, out of which only six were included in the soundtrack album which initially released on 26 November 2016.[23] The makers later released the remaining tracks as an extended album on 24 December 2016.[24] The soundtrack had lyrics written by Rakshit Shetty, Dhananjay Ranjan, Kiran Kaverappa and Veeresh Shivamurthy. Deciding to not tie up with any music label, the producers released the album online under their own banner Paramvah Music, a subsidiary of Paramvah Studios and the digital partner Divo.[25] The tracks received viral response from audiences.[24]

Kirik Party was released theatrically on 30 December 2016 across Karnataka. The subsequent days saw releases in Karnataka's neighbouring States of Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. However, this movie did not release in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Over the following month, it was released and saw strong opening in United States, Singapore, Dubai, Japan, Israel and parts of Europe.[26] The strong opening at the domestic box-office was significant in that the film faced stiff competition from the hitherto already successful run of Hindi film Dangal.[27] The film's television premiere took place in Colors Kannada on 20 August 2017.[28]

The film opened to positive reviews from critics upon theatrical release. Writing for The Hindu, Archana Nathan called the film a "party down memory lane", further adding that "[t]here is an underlying theme of self-discovery that runs through the film" and also noting that "Ajaneesh Lokanath’s sound track plays a huge role in this narrative experience."[31] Sunayana Suresh of The Times of India rated the film 4 out of 5, saying "Go ahead, watch this film and relive nostalgia from your college days." She further said that the film "scores high on technical values".[32] Shashi Prasad of The Deccan Chronicle too rated 4/5 stars and wrote, "Both Rakshit and Rishab Shetty seem to have held onto the pulse of the new set of audience." He added, "If possible, take your college friends to watch this one for maximum fun and love."[33] Noted critic Baradwaj Rangan writing on his blog said, "The must-haves of our cinema are all there. Romance. Comedy. Songs. Fights. But the director, Rishab Shetty, is stupendously inventive, and these generic elements acquire startlingly specific colours." He added "Forget La La Land. This is the most inventive musical of 2016."[34]

Shyam Prasad of Bangalore Mirror rated 3.5/5 stars and wrote, "Director Rishab Shetty manages to derive lively and realistic performances from all actors. There is attention to detail but without forcing anything."[35] A. Sharadhaa of The New Indian Express wrote that the film "portrays the happiness of youngsters’s life like never before in Kannada cinema" and added that it "touches the rainbow of experiences with sensibility, and does not waste much time, which is essentially the plus point of the film." She concluded by commending the performances of all the actors, alongside praising the film's music and camerawork.[36] S. Viswanath of Deccan Herald called the film "a cacophonous campus tale spotlighting on the less appreciable aspects of students’ life." He wrote, "What is infuriating is that Rishab Shetty believes bunking classes, copying in exams, throwing tantrums at teachers and principal, whistling and wolfing at campus girls, invading hostels and downing pegs are meatier than the realistic depiction of what constitutes a student’s life" and added that "What actually ensures that one does not give up on Kirik Party is the brilliant acting of Rashmika Mandanna and Samyuktha Hegde."[37]

• Kirik Party at IMDb
• Kirik Party Official App on Google Play