Tag Archives: Abhishek Bachchan

Film Reviews

Film Review: Ghoomer (2023)

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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Film Reviews

Film Review: Dasvi (2022)

Ganga Ram Chaudhary (Abhishek Bachchan) is an uneducated politician and Chief Minister of his state who is imprisoned for a scam. His arrogancy leads to weakening his rank in his party especially after he appoints his wife Bimla Devi acting CM. During his time in prison, he pretends to earn his right to complete his education as an excuse to avoid labor work. But after reading a few history pages, he develops an interest. With time, he realizes that completing education is the key to succeeding in elections by building optimism through individual development.

Dasvi is like Sardar Ka Grandson, a thoughtful and impressive story but weak execution. But the difference is that the former had better comic timing and applied sensitivity in humor quite well in the middle whereas the latter had no decency to push for an emotional tale by applying extremely forced humor.

Secondly, Dasvi also looks to reimagine the Munnabhai duology but calling it copied from the latter will be incorrect because the director tried to separate the elements of the Munnabhai series in Dasvi. There is a glimpse of matching the plotline but both films run in different parallels.

Yes, Dasvi is an exaggerated comedy but the film can be qualified as a political satire. Abhishek Bachchan, who I believe has begun his second inning from Manmarziyaan and has been selective in picking films and roles, has found the momentum in Dasvi where the audience will accept him and give him another chance. He has always been a good actor but his past choices and being compared to his father ridiculed his career. But this is the first time I feel that like many actors in the past few years, Abhishek is building a repo and may come out of being underrated for more than a decade.

Although, Abhishek’s performance in Dasvi wasn’t really as impressive as he has performed like this in the past. But if someone has watched him in a lot of films, will observe that in the past films he didn’t have the confidence to act nor did most of the directors try to dig his hidden artistry. But now, he is a learned actor making rounds.

But more than Abhishek, Nimrat Kaur is the winner here. Her character development was impressive. Her transition from a clueless and illiterate housewife becoming an interim CM to a refined one was splendid. Also, I must mention Yami Gautam‘s supporting role. Looks like she is getting serious about playing character roles.

Dasvi deserved a better script to do justice to the story.

RATINGS: 4/10