English Vinglish hindi movie review ‘Sridevi and Amitabh Bachchan’

 

EnglishVinglish is a comedy drama Hindi film written and directed by Gaouri Shinde and produced by Sunil Lulla, R. Balki, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and R. K. Damani.

It starred with late actress Sridevi who played the protagonist role. After 15 years long break, Sridevi returned to filmmaking with the film. It also featured with Adil Hussain, French actor Mehdi Nebbou, Priya Anand and Amitabh Bachchan and AjithK umar had guest appearances in the Hindi and Tamil versions respectively.

The film was also re-shot in Tamil language and released on 5 October 2012 with a Telugu dubbed version.

English Vinglish was first premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival on 14^th September 2012. There, the film received a ten-minute standing ovation from house full audiences.

After the Toronto premiere, some international media outlets hailed Sridevi as the "Meryl Streep of India".

America's entertainment weekly Variety wrote in its review of English Vinglish that it found Sridevi "[d]disarmingly charming in a manner that recalls Audrey Hepburn."

In India, the film was released on 5 October 2012. Before theatrical released, the film was specially screened for the Indian press and critics. It was one of the biggest premiered in India of this year.

The film music’s was composed by Amit Trivedi and the lyrics were written by Swanand Kirkire for the Hindi version, Pa. Vijay for the Tamil and Krishna Chaitanya for the Telugu versions. The soundtrack was released on 1 September 2012, in Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad.

BBC reviewed the soundtrack as "Having delivered hit albums like Ishaqzaade, Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu and Dev D, Trivedi proves here that he’s a talent unafraid of experimenting. He stands on the verge of big success."

IBNlive.in rated the soundtrack 3.5/5 stating, "Although the 'English Vinglish' album lacks the lustre of new age Bollywood albums, it manages to leave the listener smiling with its simple approach. There are no remixes and nothing out-of-the-box here, but it delights."

The film’s story was based on a super sensitive homemaker Shashi Godbole (Sridevi) who is an upper middle class wife, mother of two children and also a daughter in law. She is a perfect house wife as like handling her house and children’s responsibility with passion.

She is also a small entrepreneur who makes and sells laddoos as a home-run business. With her all expertise, she has one lacking that is she cann’t spoke much English. For this reason, her husband Satish (Adil Hussain) and daughter Sapna (Navika Kotia) always mocked with her and treat her disrespectfully. But her son Sagar (Shivansh Kotia), loves her as like she is and she also appreciated by her mother in law (Sulabha Deshpande).

Shashis’s elder sister Manu (Sujata Kumar) lives in New York City. She invites Shashi’s family to her daughter Meera’s wedding. But, for some reason Shashis goes to New York alone before five weeks of weeding. Her husband and children will join later at the wedding ceremony. Due to her New York solo journey she faces many problems because of her weak skills in English. At that time, her fellow passenger (Amitabh Bachchan) is supporting and giving her inspirational advice.

After reaching New York city, she faces a horrible situation at O’café because she can’t properly communicate in English. That moment she meets a French male chef Laurent who sees all happening in the café and felling sympathetic because he is also weak in English.

Shashi is not a person who gives up easily, when she gets chance to learn English in New York city. She secretly enrolls in an English language course where they offer learning English language in four weeks. For this course fee, she invests her all savings which she earned from selling Laddoos.

David Fischer is the instructor of the course and a Mexican nanny named Eva, a Pakistani cab driver named Salman Khan, a Chinese hairstylist named Yu Song, a Tamil software engineer named Ramamurthy, a closeted African-Caribbean man named Udumbke, and also Laurent is Shashi’s new peers.

Within very short time, she become one of the promising students of the class and as well as her polite behavior she earns peers and teacher’s respect. Once again she is starts to get her self-worth. Currently, she is very confidently communicating with others. 

In the meantime, Shashi realize Laurant becomes attracted to her.

However, Shashi’s niece Radha know about her secret classes and she is trying her best to support her aunt. Shashi start to watch English movie and other home works.

But the problem is starts when Shashi’s family join the wedding. Because of schedule conflict, she decides to felt her classes and exams to leave. For completing the course and getting course certificate she has to attain a five-minute speech test. But, the test date is clash with wedding date. So, it forcing to her mind to miss the test. 

After knowing about this matter, Radha invite the full class to the wedding. In the wedding ceremony, Shashi gives a heart touching emotional speech for the married couple in English. Everyone is surprised because they knew her as a homemaker.   

In her heart touching speech, she shares her mind’s thought. Her values and respect about family life and love. She also explores that a family is an only safe place where people never jogged for weaknesses and there has unconditional love and respects.

After her speech, her husband and daughter feel regrets for showing her disrespect. Shashi’s course instructor Fischer declares that she successfully completed her test and issues the course certificates. At last moment, Shashi thanks Laurant for making her feel better about herself. Then, they return in India.

The story is basically inspired from the director and writer Shinde’s mother life, who is a Marathi-speaking woman and ran a pickle business at her house in Pune. Her mother was also not fluent in English. As a child, Shinde felt embarrassed for it.

In an interview, Shinde said, "I made this film to say sorry to my mother”.     

In the thought provoking story, we have so many things to learn. The story leaves an impact on audience’s mind that how we treat our mothers at home and how much respect do we pay to housemakers. Unfortunately, it is a common problem in our society Where people are tortured by their weaknesses. However, the story teaches us that every person is equally worthy and respectful despite their differences and circumstances and we need to be respectful about that lesson.

After released, the film received worldwide critically acclamation and commercial success. It’s making budget was 10 crores rupees and its gross collection was 91.42 crore rupees.

Shinde’s writing, direction and Sridevi’s beautiful performance were praised by all. As well as, Amit Trivedi’s simple but mesmerizing music with Laxman Utekar’s cinematography created such a joy and simplicity in the movie.

Here are some critics review about English Vinglish,

TheTimes of India gave it four out of five, calling it "[e]easily one of the best films of 2012 ... [Sridevi's] performance is a masterclass for actors ... Request you to make a little place next to you, Rajkumar Hirani; Gauri Shinde has taken a bow in mainstream Bollywood."

Rajeev Masand of CNN-IBN gave it three and a half, and said that Sridevi delivers "a performance that is nothing short of perfect ... It's warm and fuzzy, and leaves you with a big smile on your face."

KateTaylor of The Globe and Mail gave it two out of four and wrote: "One wonders how long the neglectful Satish will remember the message of equality and gratitude if it is delivered as gently as this movie does."

In 2012, English Vinglish won the Best Debut Director award for Gauri Shinde. It was short listed for Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category. December 2012, the film had selected for showing the Marrakech International Film Festival and the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival in February 2013.

The film was also premiered in the 36th Portland International Film Festival in US and was selected played at the third Beijing International Film Festival and the International Film Festival of Panama. In May 2013, this film won the 'Best Visiting Artist' award at the San Diego Film Festival.

AmericanWriter and critic David D. Levine praised the film, saying "[t]though it's not a musical, strictly speaking, there's quite a bit of music and dance, and the film is laugh-out-loud funny and heart-rending by turns ... My favorite film of this PIFF. Five stars out of five."