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Sitaare Zameen Par- movie review

Sincerely intended... meanders on the way to conclusion

  


sitare zameen par movie review

Gulshan Arora (Aamir Khan) is perpetually irate and a snappish person with him confronting and slapping the head basketball coach and then cooling his temper at a bar in Delhi. While returning home he slams into a police vehicle which lands in an overnight lock up at the Police Station. Next morning he is taken to the court where the lady judge sparing him a jail sentence of drunken driven and orders a community service or a period of three months of coaching a team of youngsters with various learning disabilities like Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Down Syndrome. Sitaare Zameen Par movie review…

This hot tempered basketball coach Gulshan Arora is concurrently wading through marital problems and living at his mother’s house, whereas his wife Sunita (well played by Genelia Deshmukh) is Gulshan’s mother favourite.

One can see and actually feel for Gulshan Arora who is going through a rough patch during  several initial moments like the mother-son warmth and wry banter, behaviour of Aamir during the court sentence followed by the unsuccessful sweet-talking negotiating with NGO’s caretaker Kartar Paaji (Gurpal Singh) regarding his work profile for the coming 90 days. Adding to his woes is the sarcasm of his friend’s wife relating to his relationship with his wife Sunita; followed by his unexpected yet (ice-breaking) desired meeting with his wife on the terrace with their typical hubby-wife banter.

Then begins his work of coaching the team of specially abled ensemble characters.  Gearing up for the first match of the tournament for the specially abled each of the team member suffers down syndrome or autism of various forms and then . Here onwards the narration digresses into several sub stories within the story. Typical Bollywood style creative liberty is taken up towards the end particularly during the process of the funding the team’s visit to Mumbai for the final match.

Gulshan’s team puts in a spirited performance well progressing to the finals with the tension building up, a known characteristic for Aamir like his efforts in the finals of a cycle race in Jo Jeeta Woh Sikandar, and then in the cult classic Lagaan. This is where you realize that Sitaare Zameen Par turns out to be a few notches below these classics; more so, failing to match the inspirational theme, emotions and entertainment of its predecessor Taare Zameen Par.

Scenes depicting Gulshan’s fear of taking the lift, overcoming a team member’s fear of bathing, encounter with his mother who is secretly visiting Mumbai were unnecessary.  In today’s times is it possible to trick a Delhi restaurant owner with a lady posing as a Police officer? That’s ridiculous. These scenes mar the otherwise genuine efforts to convey subtle yet important learnings in life.

Broadly speaking, Sitaare Zameen Par tries to convey the message of cultivating an understanding the children with Down syndrome to invisible autism. But how many of 140 crore Indians would have the access to watch this film? Even if 1 crore tickets are be sold, it would be less than 1 % of the entire Indian population. In fact the message of this film ought to reach masses in the interiors and rural folk to understand the difficulties encountered by these children. Because that is what matters the most.


Cast of Sitaare Zameen Par

Aamir Khan as Gulshan (Basketball coach)
Genelia Deshmukh as Sunita (Gulshan’s wife)
Dolly Ahluwalia as Gulshan’s mother
Gurpal Singh as Kartar Paaji
Brijendra Kala as Daulat ji
Aroush Datta as Satbir
Gopi Krishnan Varma as Guddu
Vedant Sharmaa as Bantu
Naman Misra as Hargovind
Rishi Shahani as Sharmaji
Rishabh Jain as Raju
Ashish Pendse as Sunil Gupta
Samvit Desai as Karim Qureshi
Simran Mangeshkar as Golu Khan
Aayush Bhansali as Lotus
Deepraj Rana as Paswan Ji
Jagbir Rathee as Karim’s Boss
Sham Mashalkar as Rustom
Karim Hajee as Ashok Gupta
Tarana Raja as Judge Anupama

Credits of Sitaare Zameen Par:
Production company – Aamir Khan Productions
Produced by Aamir Khan, Aparna Purohit
Directed by R. S. Prasanna
Written by Divy Nidhi Sharma
Based on Champions by Javier Fesser
Cinematography G. Srinivas Reddy
Edited by Charu Shree Roy
Songs by Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy
BGM Score – Ram Sampath

Taare Zameen Par (2018) – movie review