Indian stereotypes + dozens of American sports movies = Chak De India

Rating: 5/10 (18 August 2007)

Indian movies are exploring new grounds and the talent is surely getting noticed in the new corporate Bollywood world, which is trying to implement the Hollywood studio system in this country. Director Shamit(Ab Tak 56) surely was the most talented from the Ram Gopal Verma lot and writer Jaideep Sahni also showed his intelligence in Khosla ka Ghosla, hence this movie sure was going to be properly executed product. And with corporate Bollywood's best production company Yashraj studios behind them, they were in good hands. But with the implementation of Hollywood style film making system we also implement the Hollywood clichés rather than the bollywood one.
Chak De India has explored new grounds for Indian cinema that is of the full blooded contemporary sports movie, which is completely new thing for Indian audiences, so surprises for them were stored in abundance. With the present patriotic flavor added in full jingoism, chakde surely was a good business and the creative team of the writer and director has taken its complete advantage. With a dash of many American sports movies for a start like ' miracle' , ' a league of their own' and ' remember the titans' to name a few, the duo added a good mix of Indian stereotypes over the American stereotypes used in those movies. So in Indian version we have the Punjabi power girl, a short stature, foul mouthed village girl, the arrogant senior players, mix of Jharkhand village girls and northeast girls and my favorite, for a bit sexed image a fair skinned, financially stable Punjabi girl( always looking hot, for thirsty male eyes) from Chandigarh university with a ignorant cricket star boyfriend to put into the mêlée. With them is the patriotic to the hilt coach( Shahrukh 'Kabir khan' ) who is the usual sports movie coach a 'baazigar' ( 'haar kar jitney wale ko baazigar kehte hai' ), who has to give loads of morality speeches to the girls like in jerry McGuire. This mixture surely creates a highly charged up drama which is well directed by shamit along with the CGI generated atmospheric hockey matches. Shahrukh and the 'all girls gang' have also delivered well to suit the flow of the story. And just like Hollywood, to give credibility to the contemporary storyline, the writer has based the story on the real events of Indian women's hockey commonwealth gold winning triumph in 2002, whose coach was a ex-player (apparently a Muslim) with a tarnished image due to a blundered goal-keeping performance against Pakistan twenty years ago, which led to match fixing speculations against him. While this real story was used to market the film, the storyline of the movie is completely different and has no apparent connections to the real issues affecting Indian hockey.
With the studio generously deciding not to give much pressure to the patrons mind, the movie ends up being a polished entertaining stereotyped product summed with jingoism aplenty, with no room for real women's hockey players who have went into the dark quickly after their commonwealth triumph. Go enjoy.