Mission Mangal is reminiscent of most of Akshay Kumar's well-meaning social issue movies; perfectly nice and watchable, but tinged with a slight regret that more could have been done with such an interesting theme. What could have been an ambitious effort in the right hands, a stab at posterity, instead turns into a decent enough, yet not wholly memorable experience. This falls right in line with other attempts by Akshay Kumar such as Toilet-Ek Prem Katha and Padman.
The movie starts off with a look at a failed launch of a lunar probe, for which the head of the project, Kumar's Dhawan, takes the fall though the primary misjudgment lay with Vidya Balan's character. Banished to the outlands of the far from feasible (so they think) Mars mission, he is joined by a guilt-ridden Vidya Balan. They are joined by a team of mostly inexperienced ISRO members, each of whom have their own arcs. Most of this is believable. For example, Nitya Menen plays a character who worries about getting to look like an 'aloo', while desperately wishing for a child with her husband. Tapsee plays a woman wanting to learn driving in order to become more independent. There is an older member of the team who is just counting the days till retirement. Apart from these, there are some standard tropes which a movie usually introduces to show that it is also 'topical'. Kriti Kulhari plays a Muslim divorcee who finds it tough to get rental accommodations, while Sonakshi Sinha is the typical 'modern' woman who sleeps around and prefers to work for NASA than ISRO. Sharman Joshi, in a relevant film after a while, plays a bachelor hoping for his kundli to match for marriage rather than for a successful Mangal mission.
But it's really Vidya Balan's character, as mostly happens in a film starring her, who steals the thunder here. Her Tara Shinde is, at the outset, the typical Indian working mom. She takes care of most of the household chores, has a mostly unsupportive and mildly chauvinistic husband, gets all the blame for kids going haywire and keeps a respectable job. But there is more steel to her than meets the eye. She is perfectly capable of standing up to her husband in a firm, yet gentle manner and keeping her kids on the straight and narrow when it's needed. In fact, the more I think of it, the more it seems it's her character which saved the movie from total mediocrity. And it's her idea of saving the fuel to make up for lesser funds which kickstarts the whole process. From then on the film mostly follows the standard underdog template, though they do a reasonably good job of dumbing down the science for us mere mortals to grasp the specifics.
There are some parts though where the film flounders in trying to conform to Bollywood tropes. Seeing the ladies with brooms trying to dance around was hugely not in tune with the rest of their characterizations. Also, did there really need to be such an obvious antagonist to Kumar's Dhawan in Dalip Tahil? But, as I said above, Akshay Kumar's movies do tend to reach more people than the average critic-friendly film. And if his attempts at social education does help important topics get more traction, maybe we should begrudge the effort but instead should praise it for what it does well. All in all, I would say this is a fine example of a family friendly social entertainer.
The movie starts off with a look at a failed launch of a lunar probe, for which the head of the project, Kumar's Dhawan, takes the fall though the primary misjudgment lay with Vidya Balan's character. Banished to the outlands of the far from feasible (so they think) Mars mission, he is joined by a guilt-ridden Vidya Balan. They are joined by a team of mostly inexperienced ISRO members, each of whom have their own arcs. Most of this is believable. For example, Nitya Menen plays a character who worries about getting to look like an 'aloo', while desperately wishing for a child with her husband. Tapsee plays a woman wanting to learn driving in order to become more independent. There is an older member of the team who is just counting the days till retirement. Apart from these, there are some standard tropes which a movie usually introduces to show that it is also 'topical'. Kriti Kulhari plays a Muslim divorcee who finds it tough to get rental accommodations, while Sonakshi Sinha is the typical 'modern' woman who sleeps around and prefers to work for NASA than ISRO. Sharman Joshi, in a relevant film after a while, plays a bachelor hoping for his kundli to match for marriage rather than for a successful Mangal mission.
But it's really Vidya Balan's character, as mostly happens in a film starring her, who steals the thunder here. Her Tara Shinde is, at the outset, the typical Indian working mom. She takes care of most of the household chores, has a mostly unsupportive and mildly chauvinistic husband, gets all the blame for kids going haywire and keeps a respectable job. But there is more steel to her than meets the eye. She is perfectly capable of standing up to her husband in a firm, yet gentle manner and keeping her kids on the straight and narrow when it's needed. In fact, the more I think of it, the more it seems it's her character which saved the movie from total mediocrity. And it's her idea of saving the fuel to make up for lesser funds which kickstarts the whole process. From then on the film mostly follows the standard underdog template, though they do a reasonably good job of dumbing down the science for us mere mortals to grasp the specifics.
There are some parts though where the film flounders in trying to conform to Bollywood tropes. Seeing the ladies with brooms trying to dance around was hugely not in tune with the rest of their characterizations. Also, did there really need to be such an obvious antagonist to Kumar's Dhawan in Dalip Tahil? But, as I said above, Akshay Kumar's movies do tend to reach more people than the average critic-friendly film. And if his attempts at social education does help important topics get more traction, maybe we should begrudge the effort but instead should praise it for what it does well. All in all, I would say this is a fine example of a family friendly social entertainer.
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