Oh wow, another story about a talented loner who overcomes the ridicule of his peers, the unhelpfulness of his parents, and his own personal shortcomings, to triumph over adversity and win the love and respect of everybody. We haven�t seen one of them in a while now have we. Thankfully Iqbal, though generally following the local-boy-come-good training manual, does have some heart and is saved by the charmingly sweet performances of its three main leads, Shreyas Talpade, Shweta Prasad and Naseeruddin Shah, who, for me, makes up for his diabolically bad performance in Krissh as the washed-up old coach who takes young Iqbal under his wing and turns him into a winner.
You�re going to see better movies this year, you�re going to see a lot of better movies this year in fact, but Iqbal, like its protagonist, overcomes its total lack of originality by being undeniably heartwarming and well-made. No unnecessary singing or dancing here! Instead we have the tale of Iqbal Kahn (Talpede), a poor farmer�s son who dreams of becoming a cricketer but is hampered not only by his family�s hardships but also by being deaf and mute since birth. With his sister to translate for him he gets by, stealthily watching the local village�s cricket academy in an attempt to gleam tips to improve his own bowling. After being selected by the academy on raw talent alone he sneaks around his cricket-hating father and trains with the squad.
Of course no film allows its central characters much of a respite from the horrors of their daily lives and Iqbal is cut from the team after getting on the wrong side of a benefactors son. Depressed, he stumbles upon an old photograph which shows the town drunk (Shah) as a magnificent cricketer of old, and after much hassle and throwing of water convinces the sad lush to train him. He gets in more trouble, there are frequent obstacles to overcome yada yada. It�s all pretty simple and routine and does everything it can not to tax you, but writer/director Kukunoor keeps it on message and does a reasonable job plodding it all along. While the DVD box suggested an absurd runtime of 172 minutes it actually clocked in at just under 120, which while still a little too long is positively snappy by Bollywood standards.
Much of the credit for this ease of interest is the engaging leads. Talpede does little more than gurn and occasionally cry, but his sweet, never-say-die attitude is just right, and with Shweta Prasad as his sister and voice Khadija they form quite a team. Shah is more of a surprise, straying somewhat from the wisened old mentor role by cleaning up quickly and staying that way. No Dennis Hopper in Hoosiers for this guy. As for their parents, Prateeksha Lonkar and Yatin Karyekar as mum and dad respectively are also quite a revelation. Lonkar is a firebrand who subverts his husband to help her son, while Karyekar is not quite the clear-cut cricket-hater he appears to be. No one has much of a backstory, and the characters are not that deep, but for a little film like Iqbal that�s all for the best. |
