Super 30 Movie Review - A Desperate Attempt to Sell An Underdog Story
Cast - Hrithik Roshan, Mrunal Thakur, Virendra Saxena, Pankaj Tripathi, Aditya Shrivastava
Directed By - Vikas Bahl
Genre - Biography, Drama
There are several moments in Super 30 where we are constantly reminded that "Raja ka beta raja nahi banega". This line is found in almost every corner and is overused desperately by the filmmakers for the audience. It has an impact when it is delivered by Virendra Saxena but feels ironic when repeated by Hrithik Roshan. You can almost see the people on the sets grinning at each other. Finally, it becomes redundant and boring when the same line starts coming out from nearly every characters mouth. It becomes clear that the director Vikas Bahl goes for a more mainstream approach where there is no room for subtlety. This kind of cinema has been recently proven to be successful by Anubhav Sinha, but Bahl's approach feels bland and uninteresting.
Super 30 is based on the educational program of the same name which was founded by mathematician Anand Kumar in which 30 students are selected and given free IIT-JEE coaching classes. From publishing his paper in an international journal to getting admission in the prestigious Cambridge University to taking up the challenge of providing free coaching to the underprivileged children, there is already too much compelling drama in his rural Patna life. But when has Bollywood been satisfied by the raw source material? They are not able to digest anything inside the camera unless it is sprinkled with more "masala". As a result for a film which should have inspired you to go home and open a Maths textbook or made you think about the importance of education and evaluate the comfortable lifestyle around you, it somehow manages to churn out an exhausting experience after which all you are inspired to do is to take a long refreshing nap. The long runtime and the unnecessary drag during the second half are to be blamed.
The film opens with one of Anand's student giving a speech in London. The story of Anand is told through a flashback which is narrated by this student. We first see him as a winner of the Ramanujan Debate competition for which he feels a little sad because the person who came second got a foreign journal and all he got was just a medal. Later a peon tells him that the best way to own a copy is to get yourself published in it. The next thing we know is that he gets himself printed in the book which gives way to one of the best scenes in the film where he tells a faculty his full name by showing it in the book. His father (Virendra Saxena) is very supportive and wants his son to excel in education. When Anand (Roshan) gets an admission letter from the Cambridge, his father runs around in joy showing off his son's achievement. Things don't go as planned, and he dies during a rainy night. Bahl also uses the weather to highlight the current situation. For instance, a storm starts to come during one of the showdowns between the hero and the villain (Aditya Shrivastava). Don't worry if you fail to notice it because they spoon feed you by literally saying "Ghar jaayie toofaan aane waala hai". I suspect that the director started to think of himself as the brilliant teacher and the audience as the naive students.
There is another bad guy (Pankaj Tripathi) who is, of course, a local politician following the outdated trope of a villain. He is a caricature (which all the bad people are here) who spends less time on the screen, but Pankaj manages to make a meal out of the part. Hrithik's performance has more lows than highs. I found him convincing in two scenes, which also happen to be similar. The first one is when he sees that Cambridge letter and the second one is towards the end when all his students pass the IIT exam. Watch his face register shock, tears and happiness in a single take. For the rest of the film, he just seems to be trying hard with that fake accent.
Super 30 may remind you of films like Hichki and even Home Alone. A scene in which the 30 students perform a scene from Sholay in English reminded me of Kesari. That happened because of the way it progressed into two groups of people shouting at each other and the one with the louder noise emerged victoriously. In Kesari too we see Akshay fighting the battle of sounds with the enemies as both the parties bang the hell out of the drums generating enough noise pollution to make the audience deaf. But I was more curious about another scene in which a woman (sent by the villains) accuses Anand of sexual harassment. At that moment, rather than a dramatization of a real event, it seemed more like the director was trying to defend himself of the charges against him.
Formulas fly out from the blackboard, and the students are made to solve problems from everyday life. They prove to be extremely talented and curious to figure out solutions. Meanwhile, I imagined how different the film would have been if the character of Anand was played by Pankaj Tripathi. Oh, I almost forgot about Anand's girlfriend but then even he forgets her, so nobody cares.
Rating - 2/5
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