The Great Indian Family movie review: Just the kind of film Bollywood shouldn’t be making

Name: The Great Indian Family
Released: 2023-09-22T13:59:07+05:30
Cast: Vicky Kaushal

The Great Indian Family movie review: If you want to be brave, the writing needs to match: here, even such wonderful actors like Kumud Mishra, Manoj Pahwa, Sadi Siddiqui stand no chance. Neither does the always watchable Vicky Kaushal.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

The Great Indian Family movie review: Vicky Kaushal stars in this Vijay Krishna Acharya directorial.

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The Great Indian Family movie review: Just the kind of film Bollywood shouldn’t be making

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The Great Indian Family is just the kind of film Bollywood should be making more of. Wait, scratch that. The Great Indian Family is just the kind of film Bollywood shouldn’t be making more of. Not because it doesn’t have a topical, much-needed idea, but because having a great premise isn’t enough. Diluting it with lax execution does more harm than good.

Once upon a time Hindi cinema was the best place to cement the slogan– Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Issai, aapas mein sab bhai bhai– even if the balance was almost always skewed towards the Mishrajis and the Chaturvedijis. In Vijay Krishna Acharya’s film, which is clearly hoping to be a modern fable laced with strong contemporary comment, Vicky Kaushal’s ‘bodi-flaunting’ Pandit Ved Vyas Tripathi aka Billu stands for the best of us. Or let’s just say, Billu’s journey from an ignoramus who thinks Allah-hu-Akbar is a greeting, to a wise, inclusive citizen of Indian who knows the right thing to say, and even better, the right thing to do.

To get to that point, the film pads the plot, something Yash Raj Films has been guilty of before. Billu, who lives with his pandit father (Mishra) and uncle (Pahwa) has an introductory song-and-cutesy-childhood-sequence in which his backstory is explained in a voiceover (groan). There’s a lot of chatter about Govinda and ‘pooja’ and ‘havan’, and if the intention is to send up our dependence on religious rituals, it doesn’t work. Billu is made to bump up against a brash Sikhni (Chhillar, coming off strictly ornamental) in a Muslim neighbourhood bristling with stereotyped identifiers– lots of burkhas, kohl-lined eyes– in which the residents can be ‘pechanoed from their kapdas’ (recognised from their attire). In what way does this depiction break stereotypes?

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A classic lost-and-found twist gives the story an excuse to introduce paper-thin characters of a Parsi doctor, a dying Muslim mother, and a benevolent Hindu couple who bring home a motherless baby home, and bring it up as their own. The complexities arising from confusion, identity politics, and the importance of inclusion and liberalism are turned into underlined dialogue-baazi, lest anyone take them seriously. If you want to be brave, the writing needs to match: here, even such wonderful actors like Mishra, Pahwa, Siddiqui stand no chance. Neither does the always watchable Vicky Kaushal. Done well, this could have been such a crucial film for these times when we are being pitted against each other. Such a pity.

The Great Indian Family movie cast: Vicky Kaushal, Manoj Pahwa, Kumud Mishra, Manushi Chhillar, Sadia Siddiqui
The Great Indian Family movie director: Vijay Krishna Acharya
The Great Indian Family movie rating: One and a half stars

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