You’ve seen this kind of movie before, in Hollywood as well
as Bollywood. It’s the movie where someone enters the lives of a team of
rebelliously careless underdogs to turn them around for the better - Coach
Carter and Chak De! India to name a few. However where these movies dealt with
a team overcoming their personal shackles particularly in a sport, Hichki gives
a larger package which is both inspirational, and depictive of the realities in
the Indian education system as well as the class differences that seemingly
start to permeate into society from the inception point which is a school.
Naina Mathur (Rani Mukerji) is a young Mumbai woman who has
Tourettes Syndrome (Go Google) and yearns to become a teacher more than
anything in life, but is rejected nearly every opportunity to do so due to the
speech impediment that is caused by her neurological problem. Eventually she
lands a job at her alma mater where in exigent circumstances she becomes the
in-charge of a class comprising a motley crew of slum kids who despite having
gained admission into the school due to the Right to Education guaranteed by
the Indian constitution, do not receive the same brand of attention or
investment from the administration as their more socially privileged
schoolmates, and are considered an extreme liability. The rest of the movie follows
the journey of Naina and the kids towards achieving a semblance of success
despite all obstacles and biases that come their way through social hurdles or
personal misdirected energy.
Hichki is a top notch specimen of a commercial Bollywood
film out to generate a social discussion while sensitising the audience with
something new, which here is Naina’s Tourette’s Syndrome. It deals with class
conflict that seemingly starts to establish itself from the nascent days of
school; the concept of privilege and the resultant opportunities, both of which
are probably not at par for 2 given people; the system of segregation of
students into classrooms based on their academic performance – and packages all
of them into a flowery Yash Raj product that despite a flurry of cheesy filmy
instances, hits the sweet spot.
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| Neeraj Kabi and Shivkumar Subramaniam as Mr.Wadia and the school principal |
The film does well by putting good actors in good roles too.
Rani Mukerji gives an earnest performance as Naina Mathur, which might seem a
bit too-sweet-to-be-true at times, but effective overall. Neeraj Kabi does a splendid job as Mr.Wadia, a polished co-teacher with Naina who is a stickler
for orthodox methodologies of teaching and acts as the pseudo-antagonist of the
film. Young talent that will blow you away are Harsh Mayar and Sparsh
Khanchandani (Uttaran fame) as Aatish and Oru.
Verdict – 3 
and a ½ 
out of 5 toots
Hichki isn’t absolutely hiccup-proof. It works on a familiar
format, gives a familiar ending, but leaves a sensitive mark owing to a strong
choice of subject and cast.
