Sometimes, what seems like an outdated premise at the beginning, works out to be a timeless subject simply because of a different narration.
Writer-director Amit Rai’s court battle falls into this rare bracket of last season’s thought still coming off as relevant.
If a schoolboy who is teased about his “size” masturbates in the school bathroom and is caught on video by bullies who make it viral, what would the authorities of an elite school do today? While the answer seems obvious, Amit Rai’s story is caught in a time warp. According to him, schoolteachers brush off a teenager for seeking answers on sex, size and “self-help”, and when the video goes viral, the schoolboy is expelled for an “ashleel”, obscene act. With family, neighbours, relatives and the authorities making him a social outcast, the teen is driven to suicide. Nobody even castigates the bullies who made the video.
Unbelievable and hard to swallow in today’s times? But that’s precisely the premise with which Rai starts out. Lord Shiva’s ardent devotee Kanti Sharan Mudgal (Pankaj Tripathi) is outraged enough to slap his son Vivek (Aarush Varma) when he’s hauled up by the chairman of the school for his “obscene act” and expelled. Looking on with equal indignation are the chief priest of the temple (Govind Namdeo) and the rest of society.
All this is a little off in current times especially after the doctor who informs Kanti Sharan about his son’s tryst with a cheap form of Viagra, also tells him that curiosity and experimentation are normal at this age.
Since it is the first time the subject is introduced in the film, the scene between Kanti Sharan and the doctor (Brijendra Kala) has its moments of titillating humour.
But societal condemnation of Vivek is serious, though it continues to be a bother that it is a far-fetched, over-reaction from everybody.
Anyway, the new touch is that Lord Shiva sends one of his messengers (Akshay Kumar) to help out his staunch devotee. It is with nudges from the divine that Kanti Sharan takes the school and an array of quacks who’ve misled the schoolboy, to court.
Yami Gautam, cast as defence lawyer Kamini Maheshwari, has an inexplicably uni-dimensional role as a confident, complacent lawyer who is menacing and manipulative with her witnesses. Somehow, hearing a woman lawyer spout outdated comments on masturbation being a sin or how unimaginable and uncomfortable it would be for a teacher to dispense sex education to students of both genders, comes off as anachronistic and out of sync with today’s times.
Although introduced as a hotshot lawyer who wins, the lack of logic in Kamini’s arguments and her effete questioning of Kanti Sharan’s family members, make her look like an amateur at work. Hers is a lost case right away.
Much like the underplayed Madhav Mishra of Criminal Justice who goes on to smartly win his legal battles, Pankaj Tripathi carries the show with his impeccable performance. The naïve simpleton who grows from being ashamed of and angry with his son to fighting to prove that Vivek did no wrong, it’s an arc that Pankaj Tripathi completes with aplomb. Especially when his characteristic comic timing lands well in the court scenes.
A surprise performance comes from Amit Rai’s Road To Sangam actor, Pavan Raj Malhotra as Judge Purushottam Nagar. The chuckles in the court scenes and grin-worthy gestures between the judge and the court assistant, lighten the legal battle.
Add to it the main fight that spotlights the importance of sex education and half of Rai’s battle is won.
Akshay Kumar has the screen presence to carry off the character of God’s messenger although a visually grotesque dance with words like ‘Bholenath’, ‘Neelkant’ and ‘Har Har Mahadev’ is unnecessary and musically, a dampener. With half the moves done obviously by a double, it does not even showcase Akshay as a super tandav dancer.
Despite the opportunity given by the Shiv tandav stotram and other ‘Bholenath’ numbers which should pulsate with infectious energy, the music is tepid and hardly worthy of Lord Natraja, the cosmic dancer. Missing were numbers like ‘Namo namo ji Shankara’ from the film Kedarnath.
There is a strong dialect resembling Marwari that Kanti Sharan and family use which is curious. While the ambience looks like someplace in Uttar Pradesh or Madhya Pradesh, with no precise location mentioned, it’s impossible to place the dialect. Perhaps speaking in plain Hindi would have been better.
One is also not sure why a film that time and again tells you to keep your faith in the Lord (Shiva, in this case), has opening visuals of naked sadhus and hideously presented rituals. Is it to package ‘exotic Hinduism’?
Rating: 3/5
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