Chuck De India!

Ok I agree it's a good film, it's a different film but it's nowhere close to being a great film as it is made out to be. Clearly the film was made for commercial purposes so lets not kid ourselves in believing that the film was made to revive Indian hockey...how many of us actually know that hockey is the national sport of India?? Yes Shahrukh was good, restrained and wasnt given the chance to start hamming, have to give credit to the director for that :)

The reivews the film has got make it sound like it's one of the finest Hindi movies made...and yea a few good friends of mine also gave me these reviews (clearly we do not agree here!). If movies indeed have such an impact then following Aamir's footsteps India should have been cycling champions after Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar and surely after Lagaan and Iqbal won the cricket world cup! So if the director and those 16 wonderful ladies actually believe that they will revive Indian hockey...then they are definitely only fooling themselves.

Post the release of the film if one has noticed closely, only three of those 16 girls Sagarika Ghagte(Preeti Sabarval), Shilpa Shukla (Bindya Nayak) and Vidya Malavde (Vidya Sharma) have been hogging all the limelight. They have been all over the news giving interviews about women's hockey..if they are indeed so concerned about women's hockey why dont they do something to promote the sport?? Have we ever seen the other girls in the film say Soimoi (Nisha Nair) giving interviews or even in photographs except the odd group photo. Clearly the less glamorous girls were kept in the background...and not just in the film.

Chak (Chuck) De India will make absolutely no difference to the way Indian hockey is viewed, coz the filmmakers are making no efforts to promote the film in the rural areas, where the future hockey players will emerge from. How many hockey players has Mumbai produced in the last decade? Take away Dhanraj Pillay and Viren Rasquina...how many other names can you think of? The multiplex audience will watch the film, enjoy their popcorn show some pop-patriotism and quickly forget about the film, yes and this includes those people who recommended the film to me as well.