Sitaare Zameen Par Review: Aamir Khan-Starrer Is A Well-Intentioned Film, But Drags In Second Half

News18

4 hours ago

Last Updated:
Aamir Khan's Sitaare Zameen Par is a heartwarming film on neurodivergence, but despite its noble intent, it falters with a stretched and preachy second half.
Sitaare Zameen Par Movie Review: Aamir Khan's Sitaare Zameen Par has every ingredient to make it a blockbuster. It's a spiritual sequel to the extraordinary Taare Zameen Par. It has a social message laced with feel-good humour. It marks the superstar's return to the big screen three years after Laal Singh Chaddha. And it brings together a bunch of 'intellectually disabled' people and celebrates their lives. What's refreshing is that here, there's no room for sappiness (for the most part).
And while it may be a remake of the Spanish film Campeons, it does bring to the Indian audience a unique story. But somehow, Sitaare Zameen Par doesn't quite cross that stage that could make it a great film. The RS Prasanna directorial centres around Gulshan, an assistant basketball coach. At a basketball tournament in Delhi, he ends up punching the head coach, who riles him up by calling him 'tingu' (brownie points for this self-deprecating humour).
Angry, Gulshan drinks, blasts out Bhaag DK Bose and ends up hitting a police van. He ends up in the lock-up and then in court. The DUI case results in Gulshan having to pay a fine (for referring to the intellectually disabled as 'paagal') and engage in community service, where he's required to train a group of intellectually disabled people at a hostel so that they can compete in a national-level basketball tournament. There, he meets Sunil, Raju, Sharmaji, Karim, Bantu, Lotus, Hargovind, Satbir, and then Golu.
These individuals on the spectrum are dealing with autism, invisible autism, Down's Syndrome, and Fragile X Syndrome. But nothing can beat their zest for life. On the personal front, Gulshan is also dealing with a troubled marriage. While his wife Suneeta wants a child, he doesn't. To escape a conversation and a confrontation, he moves in with his mother.
Though hesitant at first, over time, an impatient Gulshan slowly finds himself warming up to them and holding their hands toward the finale of the tournament. This journey also helps him fix his relationship with his wife. One would imagine that it's a rather simple story. Well, it is. But rarely has Bollywood gotten neurodivergence right. Sitaare Zameen Par finally sets the right precedent, thus crushing the lopsided and ill-informed perspective of it that mainstream Bollywood often portrays.
And kudos to the makers for hitting it out of the park with the casting. How often do we see those on the spectrum playing such characters? Sitaare Zameen Par indeed manages to rewrite the rules. And interestingly, its humour quotient becomes its strongest link, because telling a story that chronicles neurodivergence is no cakewalk, especially when it has humour interlacing it.
But Prasanna manages to walk the fine line with a whole lot of sensitivity and tenderness. And that's why you genuinely laugh out loud when this bunch of intellectually disabled individuals is unable to follow Gulshan's commands, hit him with a ball, become catatonic, decipher what time of the day it is by staring at an airplane in the sky, or go without a bath for days due to hydrophobia.
Unlike Taare Zameen Par's Nikumbh, Gulshan isn't perfect. This is a flawed, man-child character, dealing with his own traumas, learning to navigate life with the help of those who suffer developmental delays. So far, on paper, Sitaare Zameen Par seems rather fantastic, novel, and heartfelt. And don't get us wrong — it definitely is all of that. But it also has its share of flaws that become a bump in its path to becoming a great film. To start with, at 2 hours 39 minutes, the film appears to be an extremely long and slow-moving affair.
The second half, in particular, feels never-ending. The makers decide to stretch it further to give all the characters closure and pack the film with a neat bow, but by that time, you'll lose your patience. And that's why, by the end of it, you'll start feeling that you sat through a moral science lesson. Yes, it becomes quite preachy. The long-drawn last sequence clearly seems like a contrived attempt at making the audience get misty-eyed.
But not every problem requires a solution — and even if they do, certain things are best left to the audience's imagination. The minimalism further gets lost as the narrative gets crammed with a whole lot of themes — all of it just to highlight the differences between Gulshan and Gulshan 2.0. What happened to keeping it simple, silly?
For instance, Gulshan battles with many emotional pangs and baggage like daddy issues and fear of abandonment. These themes are brought up — sometimes subtly and sometimes not — here and there, and yet, they don't create any impact on the narrative. Dolly Ahluwalia Tewari, who plays Gulshan's snarky and sharp-tongued mother, adds an interesting edge to the story, but the sequence that chronicles the second innings of her life in the second half completely dilutes her impact and barely contributes anything to the larger storytelling.
Additionally, neither the music nor the chemistry between Aamir's Gulshan and Genelia Deshmukh's Suneeta works. Aamir does give it his all and makes a rather earnest attempt at essaying Gulshan. But once again, it appears to be a nostalgic ride down memory lane, as it becomes an extension of the emotionally stunted man-child he has already played — albeit multiple times. However, the scenes between him and his group of students definitely do leave a mark.
Ashish Pendse, Aroush Datta, Aayush Bhansali, Rishi Shahani, GopiKrishnan K Verma, Rishabh Jain, Vedant Sharma, Samvit Desai, and Naman Misra hit it out of the park with their brilliant acts and impeccable comic timing. But it is Simran Mangeshkar as the unhinged and no-nonsense Golu Khan who will win your heart. She loves her cigarettes, doesn't think twice before hitting a man in the crotch, and is so self-confident in her own skin that when someone refers to her as Golu and not Miss Khan, she feels they're hitting on her.
She has some rather cutesy scenes with Gulshan — one where he carefully removes onions and capsicum slices from her pizza, and another where he ties her hair with colourful hair clips. Gurpal Singh and Brijendra Kala are impressive too. Genelia also makes a great attempt with the material available, but her character is no Tisca Chopra from Taare Zameen Par, thus suffering due to being undercooked.
Having said that, you could give Sitaare Zameen Par a shot. Reasons? It's a celebration of neurodiversity, makes a strong statement about inclusivity, breaks down stigmas surrounding it, and makes you think about what 'the other kind of normal' is. It comes as a gush of fresh wind at a time when actioners and jingoistic dramas have become the order of the day. Plus, Aamir has no plans of releasing it on any streaming platform.
First Published: