Sitaare Zameen Par movie review: Aamir Khan delivers fully committed performance in heart-winning comedy

Indian Express

5 hours ago

Sitaare Zameen Par Movie Review & Rating: An insensitive, full-of-himself basketball coach, suspended from his job, finds himself doing community service: in three months he has to shape a group of young adults, largely with Down Syndrome, into a team that is capable of participating in tournaments. Based on the 2018 Spanish film Campeones, 'Sitaare Zameen Par' adopts the original's determinedly cheery vein to win its matches; in the process, it also wins our hearts.
Gulshan (Aamir Khan) is the guy with an attitude problem, and he uses it to make everyone around him unhappy. His wife Sunita (Genelia d'Souza) wants a baby. He doesn't. His senior coach wants compliance. Gulshan behaves badly. A drunk driving incident leads him, reluctance and truculence firmly in place, to a vocational centre for people with special needs. Where he encounters a group of spirited youngsters who challenge his idea of 'yeh bechaare bachche': Satbir, Guddu, Bantu, Hargovind, Sharmaji, Lotus, Raju, Kareem, Sunil, Golu are all young people with specific personality quirks which go beyond their facial Downs distinctiveness, often unclear vocalisation and other limitations which are part of the autism spectrum. These are young people who have a sense of self, and fun, and slowly but surely, Gulshan finds himself being drawn into their circle, and what started as a punishment becomes pure affection.
This film wouldn't have worked as well as it does if Aamir hadn't been fully committed to putting himself out there as a hero-who-is-a-jerk, letting us walk past the annoyingly noble Lal Singh Chadha character which never hit any of its marks. One of Aamir's strengths is to play a regular, flawed guy who learns the error of his ways –yes, 'Dil Chahta Hai' is also part of this pantheon– and Gulshan is a welcome addition.
How the insufferable Gulshan finds a better side of himself, replacing the smirk with a smile, is a big part of 'Sitaare Zameen Par': you can call that out for what it is, but you can also see how a star can power a story like this, in the way it platforms and makes visible those who live with disability. It teeters very close to becoming an Aamir Khan vehicle– look, look, I am not irredeemable, even if I start out by calling these adults 'paagal' and 'mental', so of a piece with of how society at large views 'differentness' –but it manages to strike a balance by letting it be a film about the neurodivergent young people who may not lead the narrative but have an equal share in it.
To make a film revolving around intellectual disability is fraught with risk. If you make people cry, people within the community can accuse the filmmakers of being miserabilist ; if you make them laugh, you can be charged with making light of a tough situation. Borrowing the tone from the original, 'Sitaare Zameen Par' chooses to stay on the side of laughter, and it's a wise decision, because what you can convey to the average person through laughs sometimes has more weight than wrung-out-tears. The last time I watched an effective film showcasing a character with Downs was Nikhil Pherwani's 'Ahaan' which should have been watched by more people; 'Sitaare' has the starry heft to go out far and wide, and I'm happy that it's more feel-good than feel-bad.
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Because, make no mistake, this is a film whose express intention is to normalise 'everyone's normal'. It doesn't shy away from being message-y –sab ka apna apna normal hota hai—but it is not, praise be, preachy. It is here to tell us that parents and caregivers who live with youngsters with Downs (autism is also mentioned in a couple of places, which is fine because one of the youngsters in the film has Aspergers Syndrome, but in one startlingly misleading instance, a character mentions 'invisible autism': what's that?) are allergic, and rightly so, to the word 'bechaara': the need of the hour has always been acceptance, not pity. Because acceptance means taking collective responsibility for those who are 'different', not off-hand pity which can be brought out and stuffed back inside when the occasion arises.
The 2007 'Taare Zameen Par' brought dyslexia into the forefront, with Aamir playing a teacher who coaxes a near-suicidal student out of the hole he's dug himself into. 'Sitaare' is a near-reprisal, but also a neat flip, in the way the teacher becomes the taught. Which is not to say that 'Sitaare' doesn't have flaws. In some parts, the explanations become a bit stage-y, even though Gurpal Singh's character brings a lovely restrained emotional core to the man who runs the remedial centre; in other bits, the humour is heavy-handed. Occasionally, the film flattens.
But none of these are deal-breakers. It sticks to its middle-of-the-road story-telling without trying for any sophistication which would have been wrong for this film, and keeps drama to a minimum, or let's say as much as it can in a Bollywood film. A sub-thread, featuring Dolly Ahluwalia as Gulshan's Lajpat-Nagar-ki-mummyji and her soft spot, played by Brijendra Kala, is entertaining enough to run away with the film; it circles back to our sporty gang just in time. It's good to see Genelia d'Souza back after a gap, even though her wobbly Hindi diction distracts you from thinking of her as a Dilli girl.
Aamir is the star who has done the green-lighting and the heavy-lifting and staying the course. But the young adults who try and make the most of their challenges– on a learning curve that never stops, a situation which can be both exhausting and encouraging– are the true 'sitaare' of this film: the one who dyes his hair in rainbow colours, the one who hates having baths because of a childhood trauma, the one who can look at a plane in the air and tell you which route it is flying, the one who is forced to work long hours with low wages, the one who has had a bad experience with previous coaches, the one who wears a helmet and a smart mouth, and the lone girl in this gang, who personifies feisty. Director RS Prasanna and the writers have taken the trouble to show them as real people, with feelings and thoughts, who are what they are because of an accident of an extra chromosome, not objects of pity. It is their guts and their glory.
Sitaare Zameen Par Movie cast: Aamir Khan, Genelia D'Souza, Gurpal Singh, Gopi Krishna Varma, Aroush Dutta, Vedant Sharma, Naman Mishra, Rishabh Jain, Rishi Sahani, Ashish Pendse, Samvit Desai, Ayush Bhansali, Simran Mangeshkar, Dolly Ahluwalia, Brijendra Kala
Sitaare Zameen Par Movie director: R S Prasanna
Sitaare Zameen Par Movie rating: 3.5 stars