Super 30
Director: Vikas Bahl
Actors: Hrithik Roshan, Mrunal Thakur, Pankaj Tripathi
Rating: 2/5
When you exaggerate the extraordinary, it looks ordinary. Anand Kumar, a math expert and educator, has led a remarkable life by training hundreds of disadvantaged children beyond the rigors of entrance exams at the Indian Institute of Technology. His story deserves attention, but the director Vikas Bahl embellishes it in a disconcerting manner in the typical Filmi film price in the Super 30. For some reason, the real success of Kumar was not enough - so the directors added opponents clichés. Chances may have challenged Kumar, but Hrithik Roshan's version features gunmen, evil politicians, and wicked mustaches.
Hrithik Roshan is not mean, although his problematic brown face painting is inconsistent to the point of being distracted. In Super 30, the actor plays with charm in Super 30 as an avid Patna boy with the most advanced mathematical equations on which he can get his hands, a boy who hides a girl's smile shyly behind a gamchha. His eyes shine only when he discusses numbers and conversations with students, but Super 30 pushes Roshan in uncomfortable directions - like a nauseating Paisa-Paisa song where he is briefly corrupted by money and tight shirts - and gives him too much melodrama. And, as we all know now, whenever Roshan needs a shortcut, he lets his nostrils emulate.
Yet there is less here, at least in the beginning. I loved the opening gambit, featuring this young man wishing to be published in an academic journal not for prestige, but because contributors get a lifetime subscription. The scene where he is obsessed with solving a revolutionary equation on his walls is reminiscent of Good Will Hunting by Gus Van Sant, where a janitor was a genius of mathematics.
Kumar wins the subscription and gets admission to the University of Cambridge, but can not raise the funds needed for the trip, even as his father (played by excellent excellent Virendra Saxena) expands too. He falls back on the sale of paapad made by his mother, when a tycoon of training institutes called Lallan begins to turn it into a mark for his institutes.
In the film, Kumar opens his own completely free institute for 30 children, which is noble but false. In fact, Kumar founded a successful institute that allowed him to support his famous "Super 30" program. Here, the drama comes from poor children forced to share rice. Defined on the opera score of an Old Spice commercial, all emotional manipulations hinder inspiration.
The cast is solid, especially Lallan's Aditya Shrivastava, who seems to have something in her sleeve, even when her character does not. The Roshan Guides for Children have fun in scenes that are cleverly represented in mathematics. Then, the kind switches: Kumar is shot in the belly and the film turns into 'Home Alone: ??Physics Edition'. Super 30 could not be written by one of Kumar's students. It does not count.
Courtesy of-NDTV