Aamir Khan dealt with dyslexia and autism with heart-tugging sensitivity in Taare Zameen Par (2007). Widening the world to a basketball team of neurodivergent people, the actor and his director R.S. Prasanna make a tonal about-turn with a humorous narration. Do they pull it off with poignancy? This review gives you the full picture.
Sometimes, what a story says is more important than how flawlessly it is narrated. Director R.S. Prasanna and writer Divy Nidhi Sharma’s Indianisation of the Spanish Champions (2007) exemplifies the significance of what a film ultimately delivers.
Swag and insolence combine to have assistant basketball coach Gulshan Arora (Aamir Khan) suspended while drunken driving has him hauled up before a judge. He gets three months of community service as punishment, as basketball coach to a team of intellectually challenged people. “And ready them for a national championship,” adds Kartar Singh (Gurpal Singh), the man in charge of the association.
His initial dismissal of the special people as “pagal”, which has the judge raising his fine every time he utters the word, sets the tone for comedy that tickles the funny bone and unmissable messages that reach the heart.
Aamir has ventured into the sports arena with Lagaan (2001) and Dangal (2016). But this time it is life lessons that are the focus, the coach ending up learning more than he could ever teach.
What the dyslexic and those with Down syndrome may lack is balanced out with weighty amounts of EQ. And victory, celebration and happiness are spelt differently by Gulshan’s Team Sitaare. The good part is there’s much room for laughter, not laughing “at them” but with them and some more.
But, in labouring to tick off a lengthy must-do list, the screenplay has its ups and downs. The hero has a daddy problem. Solved unconventionally and with humour.
Hero and wife Suneeta (Genelia Deshmukh) have marital issues. His heart-changing experience with Team Sitaare provides an organic answer. But throwing Gulshan and Suneeta together for the final game is an example of a forced situation. Why does Suneeta have to put her work aside to drive a bus when Kartar is soon at the wheel?
One of the players has hydrophobia and never bathes. Coach, team and a rat conspire to find the right cure. Works.
Hero has elevator phobia. The goofy, cartoonish solution is another piece of writing that stumbles. But the scenes after the phobia is vanquished bring some surprise chuckles.
Two minuses: the film’s length makes the narration dip. The elaborate explanations by Kartar Singh on how sabka normal alag hai get weary with lines tailored for tears. Trying way too hard to balance comic moments with emotional weight, the humour is sometimes as nauseating as puking in a bus. While it is amusing to have Aamir referred to as “tingu”, there is an overdose of references to his height.
The second disappointment is Shankar-Ehsan-Loy’s music — background songs for Gulshan and Suneeta’s separation or when training the team — don’t linger. There’s a “Good for nothing” track that has the words Papa kehte hai… like a throwback to good old QSQT.
For a film that makes such a relevant point on special people and on mothers, it’s disappointingly regressive when Suneeta ticks off Gulshan saying he won’t understand how it’s impossible for a woman to be an actress after marriage. Never heard of Sharmila Tagore, Moushumi Chatterjee and the rest?
But there are also sequences and dialogues that amuse with freshness. Examples: Kartar’s “Normal mein dard hai”, the prostitute and businesswoman punch and the Dolly Ahluwalia-Brijendra Kala track.
While the entire cast plays its part well, it is an Aamir Khan show all the way. Watch it or not, what matters is what you take home. And this look at special people is worth a watch.