Srijit Mukherji’s “Shabaash Mithu” is the biopic of Indian Cricketer Mithali Durai Raj. The journey of Mithali from being an underdog to a renowned champion has been portrayed in the most realistic way possible, in this film.
This plot not only explores the general gender inequalities that women sports persons face in India, which has also been shown quite a number of times in Indian Cinema, but also brings out the side where they fight back. They fight every single time, even with the slightest of support and their very own confidence and will power. Must say the makers of the film have been successful in depicting these emotions on the screen and making the audience truly connect.
With this being said, the choice of the actors, be it Tapsee Panu or Inayat Verma as the young Mithali Raj was indeed a great one. The actresses did justice to every scene presented to them. We can clearly see how much Tapsee has evolved in terms of her acting and specially dialogue delivery in this particular movie.
Inayat’s performance as young Mithali is commendable and it did compliment the movie as a whole to some other level. It was a delight to watch her perform on screen. Even the performances of the supporting actors are quite noteworthy.
Despite all this there could be a debate on why choose an actress who is much more fair than Mithali Raj and give her silly makeup to make her relatable, whereas we could actually choose someone with a dusky. But I would still say, it’s the acting that does the talking in the end. The movie escalation, and we all are familiar with how much impact it holds, could have been much much better. The places where the audience could have felt the thrill, the excitement was there but not that significant.
The songs from the movie are decent but not up to the mark. The opening song of the movie “Fateh” is a solid song but could have had a better execution. Same goes for the songs like “Hindustan meri jaan”, the way we expect such songs to be adrenaline-pumping, it couldn’t live up to the bench mark.
Though, this movie brings out the real life struggles faced by women crickets and in a way that the audience could feel it all, it falls short towards the end. Because the footage from the real matches has been used in the final and Taapsee has been masked in place of Mithali. Moreover, the whole sequence is shown in a very hurried and sloppy manner. This loses the authenticity of the whole movie. Overall, the movie works like a charm for a one-time watch.
