Make no mistake about it — Dangal is a high-budget blockbuster. Not alternative, art-house cinema. Not crafty festival fare. This is a film which very much intends to make a massive dent at the box office, and compete with the entertainment typically served up by the likes of Rohit Shetty and Salman Khan. Viewed within that context, against its larger-than-life competitors, Dangal is beyond compare. The primary reason why Dangal towers over its competition is its first-rate casting.
Even before watching the film, based just on the trailer, I was immensely satisfied at how spot-on the casting for the Phogat girls was. The actors cast as the adult Geeta ( Fatima Sana Shaikh) and Babita ( Sanya Malhotra) looked convincingly like what we’d expect their cherubic tweenage counterparts ( Zaira Wasim and Suhani Bhatnagar, respectively) to look like when they grow up. Thankfully in the case of each of these four talented actresses, ‘looking the part’ seems to have been only the first in a long list of criteria that was used to zone in on them.
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