Cast:Riya Vij, Taaha Shah, Divya Dutta and Doorva Tripathi
Director:
Sonam Nair
SPOILERS AHEADYippee, it’s Gippi! Sadly, that isn’t the reaction that this well-intentioned but uneven film is likely to elicit.
A
low budget release from Dharma Productions is certainly news. It isn’t
news, however, when a film about growing up isn’t quite all that grown
up.
For all its attempts to look and feel different from the run-of-the-mill,
Gippi is pretty obviously not the ultimate film about adolescence.
But
there is no denying that it is a warm-hearted film, if nothing else,
with some nice touches that might strike an emotional chord.
The
pivotal character of the film is an eponymous overweight 14-year-old
Shimla schoolgirl who lives with her single mom and younger brother and
jives to Shammi Kapoor songs.
She comes across as real and
believable. The girl’s mother (Divya Dutta), who runs a beauty parlour
to earn her family’s keep, also emerges as a character that one can
relate to.
She is a Punjabi woman who has been unceremoniously
dumped by her husband (Pankaj Dheer) because she is too earthy for his
liking. But she is a tough cookie who lives her life on her own terms.
The manner in which the mother-daughter relationship unfolds is really the best part of
Gippi. “You can talk to me, mamma,” the teenager says when her mother needs to share her innermost feelings.
The
mother reciprocates in kind. “Bras, boyfriends, parties, you are a big
girl,” she tells her pre-pubescent daughter when the latter seeks
permission for a night out. Unfortunately, none of the other
relationships and connections that the film explores is half as
tangible.
Gippi (Riya Vij) frets no end over all the
little highs and lows that are a part and parcel of a teenage girl’s
life, but the problem that bugs her the most is her girth, which is the
butt of insensitive ridicule in school and elsewhere. So far so good.
Unfortunately,
the narrative tropes that first-time director Sonam Nair takes recourse
to in portraying life on the school campus and the many challenges it
poses for a girl who is happy in her own skin are ham-fisted and trite.
It
is all bunged in for conventional dramatic effect: the tussle for
boyfriends, a fractious election for school head girl, heartbreaks,
heated confrontations and life-altering revelations. There’s nothing
particularly original in there.
While
Gippi faces
constant ribbing on account of how she looks, she, on her part, loses no
opportunity to direct unkind jibes at her own brother, Booboo (Arbaz
Kadwani), for his apparent lack of interest in the opposite sex.
The
crucial turning points in the plot are rather unimaginatively handled,
often pushing an otherwise commendable effort into all-encompassing
shallowness.
Especially appalling is the cringingly poor writing
in the pre-interval party scene – remember this is a Karan Johar
production and boisterous parties are at the very heart of human
existence.
Gippi’s escort for the evening, Arjun (Tahaa Shah), a
much older boy that she has a crush on, turns out to be an insufferable
oaf, and her bitter classroom rival, Shamira (Jayati Modi), the girl
with the hot bod, high marks and pots of money, humiliates her in
public.
Surely a girl who goes to the best school in town would
have the sense and social finesse not to call a classmate a “fat, ugly
loser” without any apparent provocation. But she does because the
screenplay desperately needs her to be obnoxious.
Gippi
has many such awkwardly overwrought scenes, none worse than the one that
pits the girl’s mamma against her estranged husband at the latter’s
second wedding with a foreigner. At the end of it, when peace has been
restored by the spunky Gippi, they all pose for a happy family portrait.
Gippi is a feel-good drama and
everything, even an overdose of clumsy preaching, is fair when the
principal pursuit is happiness.
moreover not the story line but the songs are also fully enjoyable !!
Ratings: *** (5)
