Chhalang
This is not a great movie like Dangal or even a good one like Chak de India, but it is one that you could watch because you do not let a Hansal Mehta - Rajkumar Rao combo go unwatched or because you have FOMO!
So I did watch it ( I leave it to you, to figure out why I watched it 😂😂😂 ) and found it a pleasing watch, a lighthearted one that acts as a palate cleanser.
Hansal Mehta directs this sports caper with a light hand, and has a good cast. Saurabh Shukla, Satish Kaushik are delightful as always. Jatin Sarna was not given his due. The lady playing Rao's mother is very good.
Mohammed Zeeshan Ayub is a total delight to watch and Nusrat Bharucha was good in this role. Though she could have avoided the towering heels on a kabbadi ground. Rajkumar Rao is competent, not excellent though.
The writing is a bit lackadaisical, and it was strange that for a sports film, where the focus should have been on the players, the writers felt no compulsion to develop stronger characters there. A golden opportunity was squandered here, to milk emotions from the child artistes. Thus, the emotions all originate from Rajkumar Rao, and he has no one to really play off of.
There are a few preachy undercurrents, from the morality police, to the attitude of parents when their children start focusing on sports, but they do not overwhelm the plot.
The haryanvi accent of all the actors is on point. And that is always a plus for me.
What I don't get is the ridiculous parameters on which critics are basing their ratings. Both for this movie and Ludo.
If Chalaang had been made in Malyalam or in Korean, they would have been all over it, but now they can't cobble together two words of praise.
The same thing for Ludo, had it been a British or American film, or in any language that needed them to read subtitles whilst watching, they would have spoken endlessly about the delight of the themes and the vision of the director etc. But because a hindi movie director is doing it, it doesn't work for those jackasses!
I even heard one of them proclaim that Hansal Mehta should not stray from his genre. What pray is his genre? He is the man who has given us Shahid and Aligarh and Omerta after having directed Khana Khazana for roughly 2 decades! Surely he knows what genre he wants to do!
Ignore those mindless nutcases!
Ignore me and make up your own mind!
I shall always fall back on hindi cinema, even if I have discovered the magic of Malyalam cinema and World cinema.
So it's on to Soorarai Pottru, for me next.
Let me know what you are watching.
Happy Diwali!
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