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Hawaa Hawaai, writer-director Amole Gupte’s new film, is like a companion piece to his sparkling directorial debut Stanley Ka Dabba. But unlike that tiffin box full of goodies, this one has the wind blowing in all directions — moving you at times and manipulating your emotions at others.
The film’s tagline goes: Kuch sapne sone nahin dete. Maybe that’s why Hawaa Hawaai takes on the mantle of lulling you to sleep in the first half hour with cliched, cringe-worthy images of child labour set to unending sympathetic songs.
It’s only when Arjun (Partho Gupte) starts dreaming of skating that the movie wakes up. He’s the chaiwala at the Bandra Kurla parking lot where Lucky Sir (Saqib Saleem) teaches skating to rich kids of all sizes and shapes every night.
While the ‘slumdog’ cannot afford his own rolling skates, he has enough resourceful friends — the mechanic boy, the flower boy, the garbage boy, the weaver boy — who manage to make the tea boy makeshift skates out of scrap. When Lucky Sir spots the natural talent, he decides to train Arjun for the district and state level skating championships.
The film’s simplicity and lack of a riveting storyline is not Hawaa Hawaai’s problem. The use of hackneyed situations and much-seen scenes is. You know the narrative curve beforehand and there is never a refreshing diversion. Only noble thoughts and big hearts cannot engage or entertain.
Also, the boy just wanted to skate; the winning was the coach’s dream. That shrinks the stakes considerably and Gupte the writer has to link Arjun’s big race with his father’s death to make a match out of the finale.
Even the parallels with the Mahabharata are overdone. The protagonist is named Arjun but becomes Eklavya as he secretly watches the coach teach other kids and picks up the tricks of the rolling game. He, along with the four other ‘slumdogs’, are called Paanch Paandav. And when Arjun struggles in the climactic race, Dronacharya becomes Krishna as Lucky Sir keeps shouting: “Tu kar! Tu kar!” from the sidelines.
Amole Gupte has a knack for casting the right faces when it comes to his kid-full cast and is again spot on here. Besides his own son Partho, who is showy in a couple of scenes but otherwise excellent, the young boys playing the other Paandavs form the real big heart of the film. Saqib is natural as the coach and his spontaneity comes through in many an intense moment.
The film’s been largely shot on DSLRs but director of photography Amol Gole in tandem with editor Deepa Bhatia uses close-ups effectively to not let the images lacking depth stick out. Hitesh Sonik’s songs are easy on the ears but too many pop up too often,hampering the film’s pacing.
Despite some genuinely touching moments and the carpeted feel-goodness, the over-sentimental Hawaa Hawaai lacks the innocence of Gupte’s far superior earlier film. However kids, who are less judgemental about their movies, should enjoy large parts of it. What they are not likely to get is why the boy coming fourth in the final skating race is called Aamir. Gupte uncle, would you like to answer that one?
