Watched the movie last night after getting tired of reading positive reviews on the movie one after the other and here I am adding another review to the list.
The movie was fun to watch, the outcome of the movie is what anyone can predict after watching it for the first fifteen minutes. I am not going to go into the details of what the movie is all about because some seventy odd reviews have gone into the details of that already.
Fine acting from SRK, good to see a no glamour movie from bollywood. It was interesting to go through all the exisitng reviews of this movie on MS, everyone seems to have fallen in love with this movie – people are watching it over and over again. It is being described as the best movie of 2007, some think this is oscar winning material. Undoubtedly this has become an icon of national pride atleast for the time being
BUT isnt it a disgrace that even a movie that’s being regarded so highly is not original Indian.. just a remake of a movie that was made for America. As usual our copycat filmmakers used the same storyline, same scenes, translated a few dialogues ( replaced India for America) and here we go….turned it into a dose of patriotism hormone for Indians.
For those of you who do not trust this, please watch the 2004 movie Miracle or just google it and read what that movie is about.
Miracle is a Disney movie set in 1980, when the United States Ice Hockey team’s coach, Herb Brooks, took a ragtag squad of college kids up against the legendary juggernaut from the Soviet Union at the Olympic Games. Despite the long odds, Team USA carried the pride of a nation yearning from a distraction from world events. With the world watching the team rose to the occasion.
Doesn’t it sound the same except for Chak De was modified for Indian audiences and had a women’s team to make it more appealing to the Indian audiences.
Similarities between Miracle and Chak De
Both have a coach with un fulfilled dreams
Both start with team members who play for their respective areas/ smaller teams
Both have a scene on “ who do you play for”
Coach pushes them to extremes to gel them together
They barely manage to qualify for world cup
They do badly in their first world cup match and then defeat the same team during a tie breaker in the final
Both movies are aimed at making their audiencies high on a doze of patriotism hormone
And countless scenes as well as dialogues which have been lifted straight from the other movie.
Some questions remain, why do we think its better than Lagan or that it is Oscar level material when the only solid point of the movie is the storyline which is stolen anyway. The movie itself doesn’t have anything spectacular to talk about it is being loved by us Indians because it gives us positive re inforcement about our national pride which is a good thing but would have been a lot better if it had an original plot.
Please remember, if you don’t comment – it defeats the purpose of my review.