Apr 19, 2010 12:32 AM
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When Director Milind Ukey, Paathshaala mein apna naam opening credits mein likhte hai, he also mentions his film school FTII along with his name. Indian film history mein iss se bada FTII ka apmaan nahi hua hai.
After seeing the dismal Paathshaala, koi bhi akalmand aadmi uss film school mein jaane ki nahi sochega, jaha se iss film ke director pass huey hai. Thankfully for FTII, students like Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Sanjay Bhansali and Raj Kumar Hirani are doing it proud with their wonderful movies.
Anyway, shuruvaat se shuru karein tou, Paathshaala was probably meant to be ek strict principal aur unke naye young teacher ki story. The similarities with Adi Chopra’s Mohabbatein would have been enormous, so the story then becomes a school story.
Iss school mein kuch darjan-ek students aur staff hai. Ek typical parsi, ek darrpok bengali, ek ex army sports coach, ek school girl jo apne English sir se infatuated hai, ek student couple, jo thankfully sirf ek doosre ko door door se smile dete hai - aur kuch aisi hi completely ordinary aur forgettable characters - iss school ka part hai.
Because of some aarthik reasons, principal ko school ki policies change karni padti hai - jiss se students ko kaafi takleef sehen karni padti hai, aur teachers bhi sharminda hote hai. So they protest and call a strike. But everything gets sorted by the end.
When described in 2 paras, the story sounds ok - but actually this story is put together with random scenes, listless songs, and boring montages. Cast mein bahut saare behtareen actors hai, par except for Sourabh Shukla, everybody else is colossally wasted.
The biggest dissapointments are Nana Patekar and Shahid Kapoor. No they are not bad, but why would they want to be a part of such an amateur project. Even Ayesha Takia is completely wasted.
Anyone who has ever seen even one movie scene being shot, is aware of the tremendous hard work involved. On another level a movie is a creative product which is almost like the production team’s baby. But, an audience spends its hard earned money - and they should be given their money’s worth.
We are not very fond of criticising a movie - but Paathshaala definitely deserves it. The writing is bad, the direction is lazy, the music is forgettable and the acting is uneven. Let us explain this with a couple of examples …
Ayesha Takia asks Shahid Kapoor to teach music, but for some reasons he refuses. The next day however, Shahid does teach music to the child students - by singing a song about heart break - when Ayesha Takia sees no no no hears this this she bursts into a big smile, which grows bigger and bigger and then bubbles over as laughter. Really? No suggestion of romance yet, no proof that Shahid is going to be a great music teacher - just because he does her a favour, she looses her marbles. Really?
Example 2 - The strict and ethical Nana Patekar ko school ke trustees majboor kar rahe hai ke woh school ko commercially chalaye, so he decides to resign - ek dus minute lambe bhaashan ke baad. Woh apna desk pack up karte hai and is about to leave jad school ke 20-25 bachche unhe gher lete hai, ek flowers ka bouquet dete hai and ask him not to leave. 10 seconds later - he agrees to stay back. Really? So what was the movie all about then!!!
Yeh ek completely bakwaas film hai - aap iss se door hi rahe. For those 3-4 scenes where a completely restrained Nana Patekar gives us an acting masterclass - we give Paathshaala 1
