Post their thoughtful off-beat intense dramas as SHAHID, CITY LIGHTS, ALIGARH and OMERTA, both Hansal Mehta (the director) and Rajkummar Rao (the actor) move out of their familiar dark zone and deliver a simple, small town, school sports drama as a fresh change.
The film aptly titled CHHALAANG (the leap), no doubt comes as a fresh breeze among the mostly crime-based online content, but at the same time it has neither anything novel in terms of subject nor has got the adrenaline rush essentially required in such project. Moving ahead with a plot of a love triangle in a school and competition between the two PTI (Physical Training Instructors) teachers, the script successfully manages to keep you engaged with many relatable small-town sequences and realistic performances. However, it still more or less remains repetitive and predictable as an underdog story, where you very well know what is going to happen next resulting in the obvious culmination.
At times the writers do try to insert some socially relevant sup-plots or sequences like the attack on couples in a garden and women empowerment with reference to the Principal. Yet, the film largely works for the same reason every sports based drama gets appreciated, that is for its final 30 minutes and in this case, the final speeches too.
With a couple of catchy Punjabi songs that otherwise don’t fit in with the language of the characters and regions (as usual), CHHALAANG has another routine addition as a spirited song by Daler Mehndi. Probably a Daler song in a sports drama has now become a requisite in Hindi films.
In other words, CHHALANG is a simple and sweet film that has a routine subject but enjoyable performances that make it sail smoothly without any dragging as such. The impressive leads are played by Rajkummar, Nushrat and Mohammad Zeeshan making the love triangle. And the equally entertaining supporting acts are enacted by Saurabh Shukla, Ila Arun, Satish Kaushik and more along with the talented youngsters (as school kids).
Personally speaking, I think both Hansal Mehta (as the writer-director) and Love Runjan (as the writer-producer) very well knew that this film didn’t have anything exceptional or novel revolving around everything similar and seen before, reminding you of the climax of the recent CHHICHHORE too. But they still made it just to break the set pattern of their individual projects (they are known for) with something safe and clean offering family entertainment.
So if just a good time pass and entertaining performances to be seen along the family is what you are looking for, then this would be a fine choice. But don’t expect something exceptionally good or novel as the film has nothing of that sort in its kitty to be straight.
Rating : 2.5 + 0.5 / 5 (with the additional 0.5 for Nushrat Bharucha impressively moving ahead of her earlier projects)
Tags :
Chhalaang Review by Bobby Sing at bobbytalkscinema.com, Chhallang at Amazon Prime Video Review by Bobby Sing, New Bollywood Movies Reviews by Bobby Sing, Sports Based Hindi Films, School Sports Movies in Bollywood