English Vinglish Reviews - POST HERE - Page 9

English Vinglish

(India)

Disarmingly charming in a manner that recalls Audrey Hepburn, Sridevi plays Shashi, a thirtysomething Pune wife and mom whose culinary expertise and other homemaking skills are routinely taken for granted by her husband and two children. Worse, her spouse and kids repeatedly tease her about her inability (or unwillingness) to master English, which they see as yet another sign of her tradition-bound mindset.

But Shashi herself doesn't seem unbearably frustrated by her lack of bilingual ability until she travels from Pune to New York -- her first international trip on her own -- to help with preparations for her very Americanized niece's wedding. When she finds it difficult to simply order water in a Manhattan sandwich shop, she impulsively enrolls at a language school that offers accelerated English lessons for students of any nationality.

Pic occasionally resembles a broadly played U.S. sitcom, as Shashi amusingly interacts with a multiethnic cross-section of fellow students, including a French chef (Mehdi Nebbou) who's instantly attracted to her, and their flamboyantly gay teacher (Cory Hibbs, who nimbly prevents the character from devolving into an offensive caricature). Indeed, if this were an American-produced film, it would be easy to imagine a weekly TV series spinoff.

Far more often, though, "English Vinglish" is traditional Bollywood escapism, a lightly enjoyable trifle featuring exuberant musical interludes, an extremely chaste approach to conjugal relations and extramarital temptation, and a crowdpleasing wrap-up that allows the lead character to be all she can be while still respecting family values.

The Hindi-language version features a lightly comical cameo by Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan as Shashi's fellow passenger aboard a New York-bound airliner, who inadvertently unsettles others on the plane while explaining the in-flight movie to her. Ajith Kumar reportedly plays the part in the pic's Tamil-language version.

Lenser Laxman Utekar does a fine job of enabling the audience to view Manhattan, where most of the pic was shot, entirely from Shashi's p.o.v. It appears exotic and inviting all at once, and seems an altogether terrific place to jumpstart one's self-esteem.

Filmfare review by vivek bhatia

Movie Review: English Vinglish

Sridevi is an absolute charmer in this slice of life of a film

Rating: 4/5

Director: Gauri Shinde

Cast: Sridevi, Adil Hussain, Sulabha Deshpande, Priya Anand and Mehdi Nebbou

The wait has been long but it has been worth its while. After a 15-year long hiatus, Sridevi makes a pleasant comeback at the movies with Gauri Shinde's directorial debut English Vinglish. After receiving a standing ovation at the Toronto International Film Festival, this charm grenade of a film promises to win hearts at home too. English Vinglish is a shining testament to Sridevi's inimitable talent and her potential to successfully carry a film to its deserved destination.

Meet Shashi (Sridevi), the perfect Indian middle-aged housewife, who knows no better than to keep her family happy. So, while her ever-busy-with-work hubby (Adil Hussain) and mocking daughter Sapna team up to scoff at her broken English, she takes it in her stride and feeds them yummy food instead. She loves cooking; snacks and ladoos to be precise. And packets of delicious food items made by her sell like hot cake in the neighbourhood. Her adorable younger son Sagar and mother-in-law (Sulabha Deshpande) provide her with the occasional but much required comic relief. She flies to The United States of America to help out with her niece's wedding, two weeks before her family would join her. These two weeks prove to be crucial in Shashi's life. Circumstances compel her to overcome her insecurities; master the English language and eventually transform into a self assured and confident woman.

English Vinglish portrays the most ordinary aspects of life in an extraordinary manner. It explores family values and relationships of a workaholic husband with his wife and that of a mother with her children. May it be the pent up frustration of a housewife, a young daughter grappling with the embarrassment of her mother's inability to speak proper English or even a husband who believes his wife is only born to make ladoos. Each and every aspect of family dynamics is been handled with utmost care.

Sensitivity is the forte of this film and it naturally works wonders. There are few well-written, delicious scenes which you'd wish would never end. Like the scene where Shashi, after befriending her French classmate Laurent (Mehdi Nebbou) at her English class, confides in him about her problems but in Hindi and the guy replies in French. Or the scenes Shashi has with her younger niece (Priya Anand), who becomes her confidante in the US. Or even the story curve that takes place in the English Learning class. It's all enjoyable and heart-rending.

"Your eyes are like two drops of coffee in a cloud of milk," says a love-struck Laurent to Shashi. And he's absolutely right. If English Vinglish is a charm grenade then Sridevi is the charm. She puts the act back into acting with her performance as the resilient and compliant Shashi. She conveys the unsaid through her expressive eyes and pulls off an applause-worthy nuanced performance. From rehearsing her answers to questions that will be asked at the US Immigration counter, joining English classes and then eventually being able to make her family proud is a transformation which has been etched out perfectly by her. Subtly performed and duly underplayed this is undoubtedly one of her best performance till date.

English Vinglish is almost a masterstroke of a debut for director Gauri Shinde. There is a strong director at work here. The characters are underplayed and so are the emotions. Despite having a few lump-in-your-throat moments, the film doesn't hold your collar and compel you to shed tears. Instead, it lets you enjoy the feel-good moments at an adequate pace. Well-shot and crisply edited, this film has a fresh feel to it. Also, Amit Trivedi with his hip tunes and modern sound gives a distinct vibe to the film.

If one had to necessarily pick out a flaw in the film then it has to be the second half which seemed a tad bit long for its liking. But that's just nitpicking in a film which is near perfect. Go for English Vinglish with your family vamily. You'll be charmed varmed, rest assured.

http://www.filmfare.com/reviews/movie-review-english-vinglish-1379.html

Catch it, Vatch it, for sure.

English Vinglish
Director: Gauri Shinde
Actors: Sridevi, Adil Hussain

Shashi is her first name. If I'm not mistaken, the filmmakers don't quite give out her last name, conveniently side-stepping the important bit about which part of India she could be from. She speaks Hindi at home, with her husband (Adil Hussain, a rather weak character), and two kids. Her husband's Hindi doesn't seem to be very good – this is obviously not much of a problem. The fact that Shashi is not comfortable with English is. In urban India, it isn't enough to know English, you also have to speak it like the Queen of Britain. A grammatical error or an incorrect pronunciation can immediately set you up for ridicule. Shashi says "jhaas" for "jazz": her 13-year-old daughter, who's ashamed of her, laughs. She is hardly going to make great friends with English in such a scenario.

Shashi remains a fairly under-confident woman hence. From a distance, this beautiful, gentle, well-kept lady in a traditional saree, seemingly in her 40s, could pass off for any other middle-class housewife. But as the film patiently reveals, there is nothing ordinary about being a mother and wife, who carefully nurtures a nest over years we call a family: the basic building block of all societies. It is a thankless job but. Shashi gets taken for granted so much that she may have begun to take her own self for granted by now. Everybody has a special talent. Hers lie in making some of the finest laddoos!

Doe-eyed, spunky, mystically catty Sridevi (Lamhe, Chandni, Chalbaaz) of course plays Shashi in this film. Sridevi? No. Given the number of bhakts I have encountered of this actor over the past decade that she's been away from the screen, I suspect the double honorific "Sri Sri" truly belongs to her. Sri Sri Devi's rightly considered India's first female super-star. It's impossible to explain why. Stardom is a cosmic relationship between an audience and the actor – it has little to do with films whatsoever. Sri Sri Devi's last hit, I presume, was Laadla in 1994. This is supposed to be a "comeback" vehicle for the actor, which is a false expression often used for several faded, once-popular stars making "comebacks". Well, the actor was always there. It's the audience that has to come back! Would they? That entirely depends on why they had moved on in the first place.

Taking a super-star, who had a set image in their prime, and getting them to play older versions of their own younger selves (Amitabh Bachchan's Mrityudaata, Madhuri Dixit's Aaja Nach Le) is pointless. That stardom is already safe where it belongs, in history. In that sense, Sridevi, 49, is in the safest possible hands here. The film doesn't seem overwhelmed by her presence. R Balki, this film's producer, gave Amitabh Bachchan a charming character exuding contemporary cool in Cheeni Kum, something his audiences weren't yet used to; he also helped express how brilliant an actor Bachchan really is, in Paa. He made the great Rajesh Khanna laugh at himself in an ad (for ceiling fans) before the '70s super-star passed away recently. This film's director Gauri Shinde is Balki's wife. Shinde is genuinely interested in telling a simple, heart-warming story first. Sridevi's popularity merely helps her convey her point to much larger numbers. This is how it should be.

During her own career, Sridevi was widely criticised for her poor Hindi. It could explain her choice for this role. Restrained, distant yet effortlessly adorable, she certainly understands her character well. Sridevi's Shashi lands up in New York to help out with her niece's wedding. The city is truly a global, multi-cultural pot. She decides to enrol in an English speaking class. Without telling anyone about it, she takes a PATH train from Hoboken to Manhattan, to sharpen her language skills, and ends up making new friends along the way. You know her life is likely to change. Thankfully the movie doesn't over-play this transformation. It's subtle. Things can only change that much in four weeks.

A white man falls for this beautiful middle-aged woman, who's also already forgotten how attractive she still is. The person is French, therefore not very conversant with English – like Shashi, who is Indian and therefore probably good with at least two other Indian languages (something that's unique to our linguistically rich country). The difference is that the French – like say the Germans or the Japanese or the Spanish – don't suffer from the same colonial insecurities over English.

In India, it's a marker for status and class. It could be the separating line between cool snobs and simple folks; convent and government school students; a posh restaurant and a low-end dive; a worldly wise father and a mom who knows nothing. Shashi could be any other middle-class mother in India. She was the mom in Wake Up Sid, needlessly struggling under a complicated language over her head, which was also the premise of Zabaan Samhaal Ke, a popular TV show based on the British series Mind Your Language.

English is a strong, silly Indian urban divide. No Indian film has captured this aspect as wonderfully as this film. Shinde nails it with a screenplay that's equally profound and funny. Yes, you must watch this film then, and not just because of the actor in it!

http://thew14.com/2012/10/05/mayank-shekhars-review-english-vinglish/