Schools are meant to upgrade and inculcate the next generation with thoughts and ideas that would make our world a better place to live in, but unfortunately schools have became victims of modernization and that is exactly the punch line of Paathshala. Directed by Milind Ukey, the movie has a decent star cast and a decent script that will keep you entertained for a little more than two hours. Paathshaala talks about one of the noblest profession in the world teaching and all the problems that kids are going through in today’s world. Before you move ahead with this review let me make a point that Paathshala is not Taare Zameen Par Part 2.
The plot is as simple as you can imagine where Rahul Udyawar(Shahid Kapoor) joins Saraswati Vidya Mandir High School as a English teacher. Aditya Sahay(Nana Patekar) is the principal of the school who has been looking after the institution for more than three decades because he feels that teaching is one of the rare professions where have an opportunity to shape the future of the world. Soon, Rahul is unified with other school teachers which consists of Anjali(Ayesha Takia) who works as a nutritionist, Sushant Singh works as a physical trainer for the kids and Kurush Deboo works as a history teacher. However, soon the school management comes up with new rules and regulations for kids and teachers and the plot takes a new twist which reveals to us how school management works these days.
Coming to the technical aspects of the movie, Paathshala is a good attempt by people who are fairly new to the Bollywood industry. Of course, you cannot compare Paathshala with Taare Zameen Par because the story, the issues and the presentation style is completely different, but you can say that Paathshala is a little lighter version of Taare Zameen Par because its a bit Bollywood style. The cinematography by Basha Lal is good. Music by Hanif Sheikh is not a chartbuster, but still there are decent songs like Ae Khuda, Khushnuma and Bekaraar. On a performance level, Shahid does justice to his role and so does Ayesha. Nana Patekar is good as always and delivers every speech with a lot of dedication. All kids in the movie are very good at their skills and they actually are the real heroes of the film.
However, the script and story by Ahmad Khan is not very tight and that would upset the audience. Many would enter the movie halls thinking that they would get something similar to TZP and that too would disappointing. However, if you love issue-based movies than you will enjoy watching Paathshala that highlights how commercialization is slowly creeping into education industry causing various issues to parents, teachers and kids. Paathshala surely is a good movie that you can attend this weekend with your family.