There are times while watching Uorfi Javed’s Follow Kar Lo Yaar when the presence of the camera feels discomforting in the middle of her daily happenings. The inherent sense of voyeurism that is embedded in the storytelling starts to feel like a breach of personal space. Right from Uorfi’s business discussions and ugly arguments within the family to her vulnerable conversations with her therapist, we get to see it all without many filters. Exploring the life of a social media sensation who shot to fame with her bold and unconventional clothing choices, the show offers a peek into the life led by Uorfi beyond her well-known online presence. While we do get to know her for the person that she is, the series soon falls into a pit of repetition where there is nothing worthwhile to explore.
Follow Kar Lo Yaar is not just about Uorfi. Her entire family features in the show. Uorfi’s sisters, Asfi, Uruusa and Dolly along with her mother Zakia Sultana take up the narrative with their presence. They are not the usual loving family but have unresolved issues of their own that come up during normal discussions and that spiral into heated arguments in no time. Their fights become the centre of attention as we look into their world without much hesitance. It is intercut with first-person accounts of everyone as they share their experiences looking at the camera. None of it really underlines the complexities of their relationship but adds on only to the shock value. It’s as if the makers are overdependent on the sisters to have an argument every time so as to spice up the rhythm of the show.
However, ‘shock value’ is not something new for Uorfi. In an episode, she admits that her entire persona has been built around creating a sensation to garner attention. “I don’t have fans, I have haters,” she says at one point, reflecting on the social media trolling she encounters for choosing to wear clothes that have an exaggerated sense of style. Although the show presents some critical aspects of her being, it more or less remains faithful to her side of the story. In the final episode, Uorfi performs on stage for the first time in the presence of a huge crowd. While her act stays ordinary as she awkwardly tries to entertain people, we are constantly told that it was spectacular by her team. It is an exhausting editing device that guides us on what to feel and how to feel at every instance. If anything, it only further brings out the insecurity embedded in Uorfi, which she happens to accept during an interaction with her therapist. There is a certain reluctance to look at her life with honesty and vulnerability.
At the same time, the series does have some truthful moments, most of which play out during Uorfi’s interactions with other artists. She has a heart-to-heart conversation about fame with another social media star, Orry, who tells her some of his insights about staying sane with the idea of being famous. In another such instance, she talks with standup comic Munawar Faruqui and asks him about staying relevant. He responds by saying that it is important to keep working on the artform in order to stay relevant. Reflecting on the conversation later, Uorfi says how Munawar has a certain hunger to do well and he is not greedy just for money. “But I have greed; I am very greedy,” Uorfi admits, bringing a new dimension to her personality.
There should have been more such moments that brought the inner being of Uorfi apart from delving into the mundane everydayness of her life. Her interactions with her team and family are interesting to watch but only until they feel authentic. Most of the time, none of it really adds on to the show’s narrative and her character, making it feel scattered and all over the place. We already know all the facets of Uorfi by the third episode. After that, it is just going through it all over again.
Directed by: Sandeep Kukreja
Cast: Uorfi javed, Asfi Javed, Uruusa, Zakia Sultana, Dolly, Sameer Aslam, Aakanksha Gupta, Shraddha Mohanti Chadha and Ruslaan Zala
Streamer: Prime Video
Rating: 2/5