Beginning on a straightforward note, if you are willing to watch something highly exciting thinking about the amazing or rather unbelievable gifted skills of the world famous Shakuntala Devi, then you are going to be disappointed for sure, as the film strangely never focuses on the most expected feature of its subject.
Cannot guess what was the thought process behind the making of this biopic of a widely celebrated, world record holder mathematician, and why it was conceived and written as a film that never deeply explores or looks into the most famous trait of its protagonist following a completely different story progression?
So, though this is an official biopic of the mathematician Shakuntala Devi, the film rarely talks about or tells you how she used to do it and with what kind of preparations or mental calculations. Quite strangely, the film about a woman known as ‘human-computer’ actually remains more involved with her personal life and her unusual and disturbed relationship with her daughter instead of her ‘magical mind’. So this in reality is more a biopic of a celebrity mother than a magical mathematician. Hence is bound to meet extreme responses from the viewers expecting the obvious.
Besides, here we also have the talented Vidya Balan, somehow performing in an over the top manner in majority of her sequences, always remaining visible in her onscreen character. Putting it differently, we have seen several bio-pics wherein the actor becomes the character and gets completely lost in his or her onscreen persona. However here you can always see Vidya Balan instead of Shakuntala Devi on screen. which can never be called a merit, especially in a bio-pic.
In all, SHAKUNTALA DEVI directed by Anu Menon, doesn’t turn out to be any satisfying film at all, because it fails to deliver what it promised as per its basic theme. Still it can generously be called an average fair as it gets largely saved by the likable supporting acts of Sanya Malhotra, Amit Sadh, Jishu Sengupta and Prakash Belawadi in particular, with the music as usual contributing nothing significant to write about.
So you can watch it for sure, but keeping aside the expectations as a biopic talking about a world renowned mathematician. The film neither reveals anything about her amazing skills nor makes you proud of her talent as an Indian due to a completely unimpressive and lackluster presentation. As mentioned above, SHAKUNTALA DEVI is all about a celebrity mother and her daughter, in which the central character seems to be more negative than positive quite weirdly. Probably this is one of its kind of rare biopic that never makes you feel any good about its protaganist.
Rating : 2.5 / 5
Tags :
SHAKUNTALA DEVI Review by Bobby Sing at bobbytalkscinema.com, New Hindi Films Reviews by Bobby Sing, New Bollywood Movies Reviews by Bobby Sing, Hindi Biopics, Hindi Biographical Movies, Human Computer Biopic, World Famous Mathematician
