Angrezi Medium Movie Review: Irrfan, Deepak, Kareena Irradiate Angrezi Medium

Angrezi Medium

Starring Irrfan, Radhika Madan, Deepak Dobriyal,Kareena Kapoor Khan, Dimple  Kapadia

Directed  by Homi Adajania

Rating: **** ½ (4 and a half)

In spite of a fractured prelude in mofussil Rajasthan  which, like  a herd of  sheep in a grazing stretch , meanders all over, Angrezi Medium is a very strong relationship drama, anchored by a powerful performance  by Irrfan. Though his illness has  visibly ravaged  him, he remains a force to  reckon with.

Also Read: Angrezi Medium Irrfan Shows Us Why He Matters

 Irrfan’s  Champak Bansal (no relation to  his Raj Batra in  Hindi Medium)  is  a proud Rajasthani rustic mithaiwala who  lives and breathes  for  his motherless daughter. He oils and  combs her hair and monitors her moves with the singemindedness of a human drone , and  doesn’t  mind being  labeled an  ‘over-possessive’  and a ‘paranoid’ parent . These labels don’t count for Champak.He wouldn’t even know what they mean. All he knows is how to be a  father. The rest can go fly a  kite.

Hence  when the daughter Tarika(ably played  by  Radhika Madan,  though why she speaks  her lines as though she has painful ulcers in her mouth, is  a mystery) breaks  Champak’s heart  , I could hear the crash all the way from London  to  Rajasthan.Yup, Irrfan  lives every moment  of  his agony and ecstasy as a single father determined  to get that prestigious seat in a British college for his social-climbing daughter who  is  a slightly annoying mix of the daft and  the mouldable.

When Tarika  turns  around and  tells her father she  never asked him to do all that he did for her,I felt  really sorry  for all of us parents who invest  everything  into  our children.

Don’t!

The  moral lessons  are  not served  up as  placard displays  in Angrezi Medium. And that’s what keeps the narrative from wandering away too far from the  crux.  Wandering, it does a lot of . There is  a specially kinky passage out of India  where after being deported from London airport , Irrfan  and his screen-brother Deepak Dobriyal(marvelouslly in mood, as usual)  fly to Dubai to get illegal entry into the UK via  a cheesy  somewhat camp agent played with a  lipsmacking soft-wristed gusto by Pankaj Tripathi who  slips in penile  jokes like  rum into your Christmas  pudding.

The London passage post-madhyaantar  is articulate and  sharp except for the fact that Champak’s daughter is shown being “corrupted” by Western influences. There is a  warm cute relationship that grows between  Tarika  and a self-employed Indian student Advait(Manish Gandhi). But soon she’s making out with a British boy, as papa Champak barges in.

Not done!

 Despite some  wild leaps  of plot propulsion Angrezi Medium  holds together beautifully. The tender  moments between  Irrfan and  his daughter and between Irrfan and his brother are rendered with  sincerity and  warmth. What intrigued me the most  was  the mother-daughter subplot in the second London half. In one fabulously enacted sequence  we see how angry mom Dimple Kapadia and daughter Kareena  Kapoor are with one another. I wanted to know more about the background of these two gorgeous  women.

Perhaps more about the Dimple-Kareena  pair in the third part of the Franchise? Meanwhile  Angrezi Medium serves up a succulent  dish  of droll and drama, sometimes both in the same  frame. Cinematographer Anil Mehta  succeeds in merging the  rusticity  of  Rajasthan with the melancholic  metropolitanism  of  London. Director  Homi Adajania uses the patang theory  of direction on his fine actors . Gives them enough leeway to let them  fly of their  volition. Not quite as high as we expected. But still, Angrezi Medium is a thing of  a beauty and a joy for two and a  half hours.One extra star in the rating only for Irrfan’s comeback.