Friday, January 25, 2008
Why I didn't like Taare Zameen Par
I posted some of these thoughts on the IMDB discussion board for this movie but was not all done. So here goes.
It's not often that I am completely at odds with the populace on a movie, but, boy, is this one of them! Sentimental claptrap, created with the intent of extracting every last tear drop from the audience, that is what I thought this was.
Not one cliche was spared- insensitive teachers, angry and abusive father, concerned mother, one caring teacher, documentary clips, spastic children enjoying...
The one cliche that was left out was the principal scolding Nikhum for taking the kids out of class, though it was amply offset by the scene where Nikhum feeds the boy at the roadside chai shop, tea and biscuits.
5 minutes into the movie I told my wife the kid was dyslexic. I knew about dyslexia more than 20 years ago (thanks to cartoon graffiti of the sort "Dyslexia lures KO" and "Lysdexia rules") and so found it difficult to believe that in 21st century India, in a private school, people were unaware of it.
Forget dyslexia specifically, I found it difficult to believe that the kid had spent 5 years in a private school (KG, 1st std, 2nd std, 2 years in 3rd std) and none of the teachers had figured out that he couldn't write his ABC's? How did he get to 3rd std anyway given that he must have been getting single digit marks in his exams all along?
Or that his mother supposedly spent time over his homework each night and still hadn't realised that her ladla couldn't string letters together to make a word (far less words to make a sentence)
The father character- he was fine while he was angry, once he started to cry, he was like the guy who played Himanshu Malik's dad in the Khwaahish movie!
Nikhum, being a dyslexic growing up was yet another avoidable cliche. And the whole deal where the teachers in the staff room take him to task because they heard singing and dancing in his classroom- haven't we seen that more than once (Dead Poet's society springs to mind, as does its Malayalam derivative with Mohanlal)
It was kind of gratifying to see that the review in Variety, the Hollywood magazine, picked on all these aspects.
OK, enough venting- time for lunch
It's not often that I am completely at odds with the populace on a movie, but, boy, is this one of them! Sentimental claptrap, created with the intent of extracting every last tear drop from the audience, that is what I thought this was.
Not one cliche was spared- insensitive teachers, angry and abusive father, concerned mother, one caring teacher, documentary clips, spastic children enjoying...
The one cliche that was left out was the principal scolding Nikhum for taking the kids out of class, though it was amply offset by the scene where Nikhum feeds the boy at the roadside chai shop, tea and biscuits.
5 minutes into the movie I told my wife the kid was dyslexic. I knew about dyslexia more than 20 years ago (thanks to cartoon graffiti of the sort "Dyslexia lures KO" and "Lysdexia rules") and so found it difficult to believe that in 21st century India, in a private school, people were unaware of it.
Forget dyslexia specifically, I found it difficult to believe that the kid had spent 5 years in a private school (KG, 1st std, 2nd std, 2 years in 3rd std) and none of the teachers had figured out that he couldn't write his ABC's? How did he get to 3rd std anyway given that he must have been getting single digit marks in his exams all along?
Or that his mother supposedly spent time over his homework each night and still hadn't realised that her ladla couldn't string letters together to make a word (far less words to make a sentence)
The father character- he was fine while he was angry, once he started to cry, he was like the guy who played Himanshu Malik's dad in the Khwaahish movie!
Nikhum, being a dyslexic growing up was yet another avoidable cliche. And the whole deal where the teachers in the staff room take him to task because they heard singing and dancing in his classroom- haven't we seen that more than once (Dead Poet's society springs to mind, as does its Malayalam derivative with Mohanlal)
It was kind of gratifying to see that the review in Variety, the Hollywood magazine, picked on all these aspects.
OK, enough venting- time for lunch
