Sitaare Zameen Par movie review: Aamir Khan-starrer is special

Sitaare Zameen Par
U/A: Comedy, sports drama
Dir: RS Prasanna 
Cast: Aamir Khan, Genelia Deshmukh
Rating: 3 stars

What’s there ever to fault a film, that’s so straight and simple, about specially-abled folks — starring eight of them, as themselves, for an ensemble cast — in effect, teaching you empathy, first-hand, with so much humour and warmth that you find yourself rooting for these actors, to begin, and end with, anyway?

To a point that one tends to somehow disregard how it couldn’t have been easy getting this debutant cast together — before cameras, that regular blokes often develop stage-fright over.

And getting them to coordinate performances, that seamlessly draw you in, as if there’s nothing unusual going on. 

They deliver. Well, I’m not saying, they’re LOL funny. Neither is the movie, actually, though it could’ve been way funnier as a situational comedy. But it stays its course, keeping you sufficiently engaged, and consistently entertained. 

Sitaare Zameen Par (SZP) — the title being a wordplay on Taare Zameen Par (TZP; 2007), by the same star plus producer (Aamir Khan) — is directed by RS Prasanna, who debuted in Bollywood with the Ayushmann Khurrana starrer, Shubh Mangal Saavdhan (2017), similarly a sitcom (about erectile dysfunction). 

That was a Hindi remake of Prasanna’s own Tamil film, Kalyana Samayal Saadham (2013). These are longish career gaps, which made me speed-watch the enacted, documentary-style biopic on Swami Chinmayananda, On A Quest (2014; on YouTube), that Prasanna filmed before Shubh Mangal; it’s a corporate-film type, visual treatise, for the spiritually inclined. 

That said, I can’t tell you what sort of special quelling of curiosity it’s taken, on my part, as a movie buff, to first fully steer clear of laying my fingers on Javier Fesser’s Spanish comedy, Campeones (2018), that SZP is an official remake of. 

Which, anyway, has been remade in Hollywood by Bobby Farrelly  (of the famed Farrelly brother) as Champions (2023), with Woody Harrelson and characters looking far too similar to the ones in this film, behind him. 

Watching a previous version inevitably messes with expectations, and the enjoyment derived from an adaptation. 

Technically, you could argue that universal access to entertainment has made remakes redundant, really. Although I hadn’t heard of anyone championing Champions, for its critical acclaim, or cinema footfalls. 

Also, there’s the crucial question of context-setting. You only have to watch the crappy Mexican version of Aamir-starrer, 3 Idiots (3 Idiotas), to know what I’m talking about. 

SZP is about a basketball coach (Aamir), who gets involved in a drunk-driving case. The court sends him over to train intellectually challenged basketball players, for community service, as judicial punishment. Now, he’s stuck!

This is inspired by a true story of an American, Ron Jones, who ended up successfully leading a real-life Aderes team, from Valencia, Spain. 

Unlike in the US, Europe, or the West, community service as legal sentence is rare in India; to the extent that there aren’t even proper frameworks and guidelines for it (last checked). 

Either way, say, it’s not like Basu Chatterjee’s Ek Ruka Hua Faisla (1986), based on 12 Angry Men, when the ‘jury system’ it’s based on, didn’t even exist in India then! 

That Aamir, at height 5’6’’, would be an anomaly for the said basketball-coach character is a ‘tingu’ joke he repeatedly inflicts on himself (through others), at regular intervals, throughout the film. 

And you can see why he’s gone ahead with this remake. Right on the back of Laal Singh Chaddha (2022), another desi version (of Forrest Gump), after all. 

The latter was a vastly ambitious telling of Indian contemporary history, through the life and times of an oddball protagonist, to whom shit happens. 

This is far more lowkey for a mainstream super-starrer; mercifully without bozos breaking human bones that’s become the norm for theatrical entertainment. 

Everyone has their own normal. I guess to keep things ‘massy’ still, it’s Aamir as the lead, who consciously overplays his act — eyebrows arched upwards, perennially gesticulating, overtly emoting, or ‘acting’, as it were. 

While he’s essentially supposed to be a regular Delhi dude, in Wrangler checked shirts, perhaps wholly ‘unwoke’ to understand political correctness, or plight of the less privileged. 

Audiences should probably wanna hate him first, before he sets off on a self-actualisation journey. Naah, he seems too much of a softie, already. This ain’t no rugged, Dilliwallah, Gulshan Arora, bruh!

Is it because totally candid non-actors surround professional actors, that you inevitably fall for the ‘real people’, more so? 

For instance, Genelia Deshmukh (playing the hero’s wife) sounds so conscious and kinda clipped, in comparison to the specially-abled Ashish Pendse (as security-guy, Sunil Gupta), Rishi Shahni (Sharmaji), Simran Mangeshkar (Golu Khan), Naman Misra (Hargovind, with invisible autism), and others. 

SZP is along the lines of Aamir’s original works, Secret Superstar (challenging gender norms) or, of course, TZP, that equally softly, sensitively raised awareness about dyslexia. SZP mainly focuses on Down syndrome. 

And it’s really about the warm hugs, and the stray situations/lines — as the doll-like Dolly Ahluwalia (playing the protagonist’s mum) puts it, “Jo baaki log se alag hote hain, unke liye kisi na kisi ko ladna padta hai (You’ve got to champion those who’re different)!”

Or, as the sardar dean (Gurpal Singh) of the sports school for the intellectually challenged says about the beauty of raising such children, “Yeh ghar ko kabhi boodha nahin hone dete (Their homes remain young, like them, forever)!

I had to watch SZP over two installments. Having missed the first 20 minutes, due to rush-hour traffic, and catching it from the beginning, in the first day first show, next morning. 

That’s the kinda dogged effort it takes to catch a movie, during prime-time, sometimes. Audience alert: SZP won’t drop on any OTT.

And then you eventually walk into the theatre, even if the second time on, among lovely blokes on the screen, spreading such unpretentious love, joy, smiles… It feels gently therapeutic, alright.

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