Writing a movie review of Paathshala is also in fact a painful task. There is not one thing that stands out, apart from may be a few hummable tunes. The movie attempts to highlight an issue that is in the thick of things these days - the commercialization of education, but director Milind Ukey fails miserably to tackle it properly.
Characterizations are totally missing, melodrama prevails throughout the second half, too many sub-plots jostle for space without any of them being taken to a logical conclusion. Shahid and Ayesha are unbelievably wasted, other actors have virtually no role apart from the sports teacher Sushant Singh may be. Saurabh Shukla is so annoying, you'd want to kill him not for his bad acting but for accepting an utterly illogical role. Nana Patekar could have been impressive, but the scriptwriter has not done any justice to his capability.
I have come to think that every such disaster sets back the pace of Bollywood cinema by a few notches. A similar theme revolving around education and its treatment of children was so well-tackled in the focused and just-adequately emotional Taare Zameen Par. The trick lay in the empathy with the main character, I think, rather than the temptation to please everybody. The beauty of TZP was that no one was intentionally bad, everyone had their reasons for the way they were behaving. That is totally lacking in Paathshala. Gone are the days when Hindi cinema had clear-cut 'heros' and 'villians'. Good modern Hindi cinema is more situational, practical, human.
My verdict: All in all, Paathshala makes for a pathetic watch. A must-miss for all age-groups.
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