Clichéd, but in a good way

Rating: Null/10 (11 February 2020)

A disgraced hockey player (Shah Rukh Khan) has stayed out of the limelight for years after his team lost an important match. But now he has returned to coach a women's hockey team during the World Cup, hoping to regain his honour.
Chak de! India is a pretty by the numbers sports film. You have an underdog team of misfits. You have a tough, but fair coach with unconventional methods. You have the cool kids. You have the odd kids. You have the big kid. You have the small kid. Well, they're all adults in this case, but this might as well be a teenage flick.
That being said, I do like what the film does with its clichés. Like the cliché where the players don't initially get along at all and have to learn to play with each other. Well, India is such a huge country and these women have been gathered from all over, so it makes sense that they don't necessarily understand one another right from the start. They barely even speak the same language, after all. And when they do start to become a team, it's a good message for India as a whole.
Still, if there's one thing I'd wish, it's that the film had dodged at least some of the clichés. Now it seems set on collecting them all. And I mean all. Every single sports film cliché you can think of, it's in this film. Sure, they're done well and they're fun for the most part, but they're still clichés.
Nevertheless, I had fun with Chak de! India. Not the best sports film I've seen, but it has passion. And that's often enough.