STORY
A highly promising cricketer Anina is selected for team India to tour England but she meets a tragic accident that causes her to lose her right hand. When she gives up on her career, enters former cricketer Paddy who revives her dream to play for her country when he trains her as an orthodox left-arm spinner.
‘Ghoomer‘ is a fictional sports drama that took inspiration from the Hungarian shooter Károly Takács whose right hand was severely injured in a grenade explosion during World War II but went on to win two Olympic Gold medals by shooting from his left hand.
PLUSES
Coming up with such a fascinating story is a definite plus. The credit must be given where it is due. The other pluses are Abhishek Bachchan‘s performance, Amit Trivedi‘s main theme, and the dramatization of human resilience and the determination and the extreme hard work of achieving something unthinkable and believing in the dreams.
MINUSES
As a critic, I must also highlight why ‘Ghoomer’ ghoom my expectations. Unsurprisingly, there are more minuses than pluses in my observation. One major fault is a bizarre setup of the actual world because anything is certain to happen in Bollywood. Shabana Azmi who plays Anina’s grandma is more of cricket analyst than her grandmother. My criticism is that the emotional value of a grandmother was brutally lacking. Especially, when Anina met accident and then considering whether getting trained from Paddy was the right decision or not.
And then a heavily drunk club member Paddy to whom everyone respects despite his ill behavior God knows why. How such person is allowed to enter the ground and mix up with junior cricketers? How Anina’s family accepted Paddy’s presence at home to meet her in her room? Paddy was responsible for Anina’s fate. How was Anina’s father speaking highly about him to Anina?
How come Anina’s tragic accident never reached to the news media? After all, she was getting selected for the national team. Losing her hand immediately after getting selected was a massive news that would have rocked the nation. She daily practiced at Paddy’s yard later and no news channel or media rep caught such a sensational development. How come no investigation was carried out over Anina’s accident? Why no police went in search for the mysterious car that hit Anina?
If any of you noticed, in plenty of sequences, Ghoomer preferred to be too musical than exchanging dialogues. Observe the first half an hour, over paced screenplay, lame soft humor, and no build-up in the making of Anina, the future face of Indian women cricket team.
And the final half an hour provide you the cringiest aesthetics of a cricket match. No surprises at all and Anina’s predictable heroic performance. When Anina’s improvised bowling action is revealed, almost everyone starts spinning like her, even the spectators of the rival team, even the patient and the doctor while watching TV. Although, this all is likely to happen but my problem is why Bollywood has to make a cricket match a larger-than-life entertainer. Why a cricket match in the Indian film always loses a quality screenplay? Why this becomes a circus show? First of all, how is Anina selected for the national team? She was not even tried for local matches.
Saiyami Kher as Anina was the heart of the story but the performance was below par. Her facial expressions and dialogue delivery are poor. The only plus about her acting was that she did learn to bat and played some good shots.
CLOSING REMARKS
R. Balki had a good run of films at the beginning of his directional career. The story pitch in his recent films is still impressive but the execution in recent years has been disappointing. Ghoomer’s middle portion was more impressive than the beginning and the ending phases. The film chose to entertain rather than give a thoughtful piece of intelligent sports tale.
RATING 4/10
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Sami Naik | Film Critic 