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Super 30 Movie: Hunger for Success, Hard Work, Positivity, Patience! 4 Takeaways

Super 30 movie: anand kumar biopic, hrithik roshan starrer 'super 30' movie is finally released today. directed by vikas bahl, this movie is a must watch for everyone. here are 4 takeaways from the movie. let alone takeaways these are 4 reasons why everyone must watch 'super 30'..

Super 30 Movie Review: Hrithik Roshan starrer Super 30, the biopic of Anand Kumar released today. Director Vikas Bahl did a tremendous job & covered the life journey of Anand Kumar in the 154 minutes movie in a very unique and articulate way. Other stars, Mrunal Thakur, Virendra Saxena, Pankaj Tripathi, Aditya Srivastava, Vijay Varma, Amit Sadh also did a tremendous job. The film shows many ups and downs that Anand Kumar faced while running Super 30 and how he sacrificed his personal gains to make Super 30 a success. It's a great motivational movie and here are 4 takeaways or 4 lessons from the movie.

# 1: Hunger for Success

The film 'Super 30' taught everyone that one should remain hungry for success. Be its poverty, money or criminal attack, nothing deviated Anand Kumar from its path because he was focused towards his target or he was hungry for success.

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# 2: Work Hard

The film taught us to work hard. Anand Kumar once sold 'papad' on the streets, in order to make a living. In the complete film, you will see his struggles and his hard work.

Watch 'Super 30' at PVR: Check Offers Now!

# 3: Be Positive

The film teaches us to remain positive in all sort of situation. The film shows that being positive is the driving force behind Anand Kumar's success. While watching the movie, you will feel the winning attitude of Anand Kumar.

Super 30's Anand Kumar Exclusive Interview with Jagran: Facts About His Hrithik Starrer Movie & Him

# 4: Patience

After watching the movie you will learn that no matter how bad the situation is, it will change. All you need to do is don’t lose your patience. This is what Super 30’s Anand Kumar did, he never lost patience.

Here are some reviews of the movie Super 30 from twitter:

Super 30 Movie Review: A tweet by Hrithik Roshan

Super 30 Movie Review: A tweet from Farah Khan

Super 30 Movie Review: Another tweet from Farah Khan

Super 30 Movie Review: This is what Karan Johar said about Anand Kumar's biopic

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Super 30 Movie Review

• Times Of India

In-depth Analysis

Our overall critic’s rating is not an average of the sub scores below.

Super 30 - Official Trailer

Super 30 | Song - Jugraafiya

Super 30 | Song - Paisa

Super 30 | Song - Basanti No Dance

Super 30 | Song - Question Mark

Zee Cine Awards

Hrithik Roshan

Users' reviews.

Refrain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines by marking them offensive . Let's work together to keep the conversation civil.

saimdylan 690 days ago

Tanishtha bhattacharjee 891 days ago.

This movie is inspirational to all those children who want to study but can't achieve it due to the financial crisis of their family��<br/>But overall this is really a great film to watch out��

Guest 1276 days ago

inspirational

Khushi Agrawal 1324 days ago

raja ka beta raja nhi bnega<br/>Raja vhii bnega jo hkdaar hoga��

viru rok 11618 1377 days ago

Based on real life of hero of Poor's in society aanand kumar don't leave it

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Super 30 review: A real-life hero and a solid performance make Super 30 an incredibly earnest film

By Abhishek Mande Bhot

Towards the second half of the 2017 GQ Men of The Year ceremony, a bunch of boys from the outskirts of Mumbai took to the stage to rap about the issues that affected them. In Marathi. Mind you, this was long before Gully Boy hit the screens and, it can be said now, barring a select few GQ staffers and the rehearsal crew, almost no one knew that this exclusive black-tie evening was going to have a Marathi hip hop performance. Some 15 seconds into their set, Ranveer Singh was visibly excited. Even the ever-so-cool Aamir Khan couldn’t resist the temptation of pulling out his mobile phone to get a video of the boys. By the end of their performance, there was no one who didn’t join the collective whoop that went around the room.

What made Marathi Cypher so memorable was the fact that they took a music style that was essentially foreign and made it their own. It didn’t matter that they barely spoke English; they simply turned to their mother tongue and rapped their heart away.

There’s a similar moment in Super 30 , when a bunch of students have to perform a play, in public, in English. It’s a punishment (but also a test) for these young wards from impoverished backgrounds for being intimidated by their English-speaking peers. They begin awkwardly, acting out a song from a Bollywood blockbuster in broken English, before saying fuck it. By the end, the entire town square is on its feet.

It’s one of the many incredible moments in the biopic of Anand Kumar, who runs the Super 30 programme that trains underprivileged students for IIT-JEE, the entrance test for the premier Indian Institute of Technology.

ALSO READ: Real story of Super 30 movie & Who is Anand Kumar

The story of Kumar is well-known – a mathematics genius who misses out an opportunity to study at Cambridge because he couldn’t afford the fees, stays back and ends up sparking a revolution – and has been ripe for a movie adaptation in a season of inspiring biopics. Super 30 follows the trend of underdog stories that Bollywood has been churning out throughout last year and this one. But what makes it stand apart is the lack of nationalistic fervour that’s come to define almost every major biopic in recent times. Instead, it relies on the sincerity of its lead character – a man who, for the most part, has worked in the shadows and let his students take the centre-stage. And even though the movie begins with the classic trope of how heads of top multinationals are Indians, it quickly moves away from there; and proceeds to pointing out the reasons why India’s greatest achiever stories are mostly overseas.

We’re introduced to the odds that are stacked up against the young Anand Kumar, played here by Hrithik Roshan, born in a socio-economically backward family. From a greasy politician whose promises of help turn out to be platitudes, to Kumar’s father’s boss, a postmaster, who doesn’t let go of any opportunity to remind his subordinate that ‘only a king’s son can be king’. It’s a refrain that you hear several times throughout the movie, but it’s the very principle against which Anand Kumar has rebelled. To say that his has been a difficult fight is an understatement. The movie itself provides some instances – Kumar’s battle against the coaching class mafia is one such and has resulted in numerous physical assaults on him and his brother.

As with all biopics, Super 30 takes creative liberties with Kumar’s life story and you’d be justified if, in parts, you went “but that didn’t happen to him”. But Super 30 isn’t meant to be a documentary (although Discovery Channel did produce a compelling one); it’s a Bollywood movie. So there are bound to be songs, an ‘item number’ included, improbable sequences and a love interest thrown in.

For all its strengths, Super 30 also suffers from a classic Bollywood problem – at 154 minutes, it doesn’t know when to stop. There’s an entire Home Alone -inspired sequence that seems so entirely unnecessary and dramatic, it trivialises the narrative. The music by Ajay-Atul, who started off their career in Marathi films, is earthy, albeit loud and may not necessarily stand out by itself without the context of the film. There’s no standout track but that’s not always a bad thing.

There have even been those who’ve argued that Kumar should’ve been played by Pankaj Tripathi but Hrithik Roshan’s come a long way from Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon . The happy-go-lucky star of rom-coms has made way for a serious performer who you meet in Super 30 .

Typically, major Bollywood films don’t release during the Cricket World Cup. The last time this happened was in 2007, when India returned home after a short-lived World Cup campaign. It benefitted the only film that was playing in the cinemas at the time. Namastey London ended up being the sleeper hit of that year and gave a fresh lease of life to a '90s action star looking for a comeback. Super 30 releases in the same week that India got booted out of the 2019 Cricket World Cup. Roshan may well be looking at the 100 crore-club that’s eluded him for some time now; and after his performance, he'd also do well preparing for a second inning.

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‘Super 30’ is a human drama and the story of a teacher who triumphs over the many challenges that life throws at him, to set an example for the world to see. Just for that it’s worth a watch.

Super 30 Movie Review

• Times of India

In-depth Analysis

Our overall critic’s rating is not an average of the sub scores below.

Super 30 - Official Trailer

Super 30 | Song - Jugraafiya

Super 30 | Song - Paisa

Super 30 | Song - Basanti No Dance

Super 30 | Song - Question Mark

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Zee Cine Awards

Hrithik Roshan

saimdylan 690 days ago

Tanishtha bhattacharjee 891 days ago.

This movie is inspirational to all those children who want to study but can't achieve it due to the financial crisis of their family��<br/>But overall this is really a great film to watch out��

Guest 1276 days ago

inspirational

Khushi Agrawal 1324 days ago

raja ka beta raja nhi bnega<br/>Raja vhii bnega jo hkdaar hoga��

viru rok 11618 1377 days ago

Based on real life of hero of Poor's in society aanand kumar don't leave it

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• This film marks the first collaboration of uncle-nephew duo Anil Kapoor and Arjun Kapoor. Arjun is the son of Anil’s brother Boney Kapoor. Share
• This film marks the first collaboration of uncle-nephew duo Anil Kapoor and Arjun Kapoor. Arjun is the son of Anil’s brother Boney Kapoor.
• This is the second time Arjun Kapoor is playing a double role, the first being Aurangzeb (2013).
• The song ‘Yamma yamma’ from ‘Shaan’ is sampled in the song ‘Partywali Night' for the film.

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Movie Review: Super 30

Super 30 Devesh Sharma, April 2, 2020

• Super 30 Movie Review
• Times Of India

critic's rating:  3.5/5 Anand Kumar is a mathematician best known for his Super 30 programme, which he started in Patna in 2002, which coaches underprivileged students for the IIT entrance test. His has really been an inspiring journey, as 422 out of the 480 students till 2018 have cleared the tough entrance test, thanks to his efforts. He has been felicitated by the government, and has been the subject of a Discovery Channel documentary. Several corporates, as well as NGOs, have tried to reach out to him but he's still sustaining his Super 30 programme on his own. He not only teaches the students free of cost but also provides shelter and food for them throughout the coaching period. Super 30 is a fictionalised account of his life. To reach out to a wider audience, perhaps, director Bahl and his writer Sanjeev Dutta have not taken the documentary route but have chosen instead to add drama to the proceedings. Their aim is to provide an emotional punch every ten minutes or so. Anand Kumar is shown more like a life guru of sorts than a teacher of science and maths. One of the themes of the film is that the underprivileged children don’t do well because they lack the confidence in themselves and Anand sets about righting that wrong. He’s shown to be a target of the coaching mafia. It’s another matter that the villains behave like stock pieces and not like flesh and blood characters. Aditya Shrivastava, who plays the head of the coaching class which gives Anand the initial break and Pankaj Tripathi, who is the politician behind the coaching mafia, are dependable actors in their own right. Strangely, they act as ’90s villains here. There is an entire track in the film where the central character is shown to be attracted towards gold, wine and women and we feel as if we’re watching a moralistic tale set in the ’80s as disco beats start blaring in the background. And the attack on his life and the retaliation by his students belong more to a masala potboiler than a film about a life-changing teacher. The screenplay doesn’t follow any sort of logic. Anand Kumar’s chief claim to fame, as shown in the film, is that he solves an impossible theorem, gets his name printed in a foreign journal and on the basis of that, gets admission to Cambridge University. The man who heads the biggest coaching class in Patna puts up hoardings tom-toming Anand Kumar’s name. Why is he being publicised as the best teacher without him ever having taught anywhere? All the 30 students, with no money to their name, do pass the entrance exam but who is going to pay their college fees? There’s a lack of attention to detail. Hrithik's bronze make-up keeps drifting between various shades. He’s dressed almost in cast-offs but his brother dons the latest jeans and sneakers and sports gelled hair. Hrithik looks older when he’s selling papads then when we see him as a mentor later in life. The sound design isn’t consistent as well. It’s the performances which elevate the film. The 30 students ooze sincerity and look their parts. One can empathise with their desire of spreading their wings and flying away from their hand-to-mouth lives. Veteran Virendra Saxena is a joy to watch in his brief role as Anand’s father. After a long hiatus, Sadhana Singh is seen here as Anand’s mother and fits the bill to a T. Nandish Singh too is aptly cast as Anand’s hot-headed brother. Mrunal Thakur, who plays Anand’s girlfriend, is the surprise packet of the film. She doesn’t have much of a role but her natural ease is amazing indeed. She does get the line which gathers the most laughs. Mention must be made of the dialogue here, which is witty most times and imparts some inspirational maxims as well. The film belongs to Hrithik Roshan. He makes you forget the bad make-up and varying accent through his sheer involvement in the role. He underplays the anger, the pain, as well as the joy,  felt by his character and makes us believe in Anand Kumar. Let’s hope this isn’t the first and the last time he’s playing a common man...

Trailer : Super 30

Sreeparna sengupta, july 11, 2019, 4:40 am ist.

RANKS HIGH ON PERFORMANCE Super 30 Story: Against all odds, India’s renowned mathematician, Anand Kumar follows his true calling and gives shape to ‘Super 30’ – a coaching class in Patna, designed for 30 deserving, underprivileged students who are aspiring to get admission into coveted institutions like IIT. But will his students make the cut? Super 30 Review: Inspired by maths whiz Anand Kumar, who has seen an astounding success rate for IIT admissions year after year with his batch of ‘Super 30’ kids, the film charts his motivating journey as a fictional account. A life dotted with controversies and hardships, Anand (Hrithik Roshan) literally rises from the rubble to mould his dreams. The story doesn’t touch upon the certain controversies surrounding Anand Kumar which have been reported in the media, focusing on his struggles and glory instead. Son of a postman, a young Anand clinches an admission at the Cambridge University owing to his brilliance in mathematics. But when he has to let go of this opportunity of a lifetime solely because he is unable to afford the fees, life hits him hard and breaks his spirit. But that doesn’t last for too long, since he gets picked by Lallanji (Aditya Srivastava) to become a maths teacher for affluent students at an IIT coaching centre, run by him. But soon, his true calling and passion catches up with him and he realizes that he must use his skills to give lesser privileged, bright students a fair chance at life. Of course, along the way, he faces opposition and obstacles one after another, but never loses sight of what he sets out to do. 'Super 30' drives home the message that education is truly the privilege of those who have the access and economic resources. Unfortunately, for many it remains a distant dream, but if given the same opportunities they have it in them to shine equally bright. There are many moments in the movie that will move you – after starting his Super 30 classes, Anand has to literally scrape through – with often the students barely having anything to eat. But their real hunger is for better education and a better life. 'Super 30' has several heartfelt, inspiring moments that touch a chord. When Anand says at one point, “Aapatti se aavishkar ka janm hota hain”, you do believe him, especially after having seen how driven his batch of students are, leaving behind their impoverished lives and literally daring to dream big. But in the second half, the film’s lengthy run-time begins to weigh on the narrative. And some of the plot points come across as far-fetched and overly dramatic, with the background score dominating some scenes unnecessarily. The cinematography (Anay Goswami) of the film however stands out and some of the dialogues hit home. Hrithik Roshan pulls off a solid performance essaying Anand Kumar, capturing his character’s sincerity and determination very well. While his physicality many not be entirely convincing, his performance more than makes up for it. Nandish Singh is earnest and well-cast as Anand’s brother. Mrunal Thakur is effective in her limited screen time. Pankaj Tripathi as the unscrupulous politician is brilliant and Aditya Srivastava matches the villainy of his character to the hilt. Overall, the performances elevate the film. While the narrative does have its flaws, 'Super 30' is a human drama and the story of a teacher who triumphs over the many challenges that life throws at him, to set an example for the world to see. Just for that it’s worth a watch.

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'Super 30' Review: An Endearing, Educational Film If You Can Look Past Hrithik Roshan's Accent

This article is part of our Mash'O'Meter review series, where Mashable India delves deep and obsessively into movies and shows. Sit back, grab a cuppa. This is going to be a long ride.

We live in a time when the lack of education among politicians is used to ridicule those who are trying to break the mold by studying. People are questioned repeatedly for spending too much time to attain a proper degree just because they’ve given up on sharpening their minds in the right way a long time ago. The smell of easy money is used to lure young minds into entering ‘IT cells’ instead of urging them to stand up for themselves and strive for a sustainable way of living. And it is probably these very daunting factors that makes Hrithik Roshan’s Super 30 one of the most relevant movies to have come out in the past few years.

As claimed by the filmmakers, Super 30 is based on the life of Anand Kumar, who went from being a lover of mathematics in Bihar to being the creator of the Super 30 programme where he coaches underprivileged students for IIT-JEE, the entrance examination for the Indian Institutes of Technology. However, as also claimed by the filmmakers, it is purely a work of fiction with events that have been exaggerated for dramatic purposes. It stars Hrithik Roshan in the role Anand Kumar, Mrunal Thakur, Pankaj Tripathi, Manav Gohli, Aditya Shrivastava and Virendra Saxena. And the movie shows the trials and tribulations he had to face in his efforts to help educate the poor.

How’s the script writing by Sanjeev Dutta in Super 30 ?

Super 30 begins in present day with one of Anand’s students, played by Vijay Varma, talking about his origins, emphasising on the barriers of the English language (although the importance of those lines comes very late in the plot), and how he owes everything to his teacher. That’s when we cut back to 1996 where a young Anand is receiving an award for brightness in the field of mathematics. That segues into a romantic sub-plot, that rears its not-so-ugly now and then to remind that there’s a female lead in the movie. But, despite an extremely shaky start, the narrative soon catches after Anand learns that the only way he can have unlimited access to maths is by getting his article published in a foreign journal.

The script follows a cliched narrative with Anand coming close to glory (his admission into the Cambridge industry, hitting new lows and then realising what he has to do in order to live up to his father’s saying: “ Raja ka beta raja nahi banega. Ab wahi raja banega jo haqdar hai ” (A king’s son won’t be a king anymore. Only those who are deserving will be a king). And while that’s bearable, it falters during the interactions between Anand and the movie’s antagonists, played by Tripathi and Shrivastsava. Thankfully, since Dutta spends an ample amount of time building up the status of the children in the Super 30 programme, it more than makes up for the secondary plot thread as their story makes you empathise with what’s at stake.

SEE ALSO: Ahead of Release, Super 30 Founder Anand Kumar Reveals He Has Brain Tumour

In my opinion, Dutta does a decent job of weaving in the themes of corruption, ambition, and classism into the story. But it reaches a breaking point during the third act where it turns into a full-on action bonanza. It is during these 5-10 minutes of the movie where you will end up hating the complete product or loving it. I, personally, found it to be incredibly stupid and a major breach in the tone of the film, but it didn’t completely take me out of the experience. That said, I think they could’ve visualised the arc of ‘overcoming one’s fears’ a little more smartly.

How’s Vikas Bahl’s direction in Super 30 ?

So, it’s time to address the elephant in the room. I am sure there a lot of intellectuals who have the amazing ability to separate the art from the artist. But, I guess, I ain’t bestowed with that superpower, because of which I couldn’t erase the whole incident where Bahl was accused of sexually harassing a woman under the #MeToo movement and subsequently exonerated through some law-bending moves . That’s why it was incredibly difficult for me to power through a scene that showed Anand being falsely accused of sexually harassing a woman and Anand shrugging her off by telling his accusers to revise their plan. Or another one where Anand is shown shaking a leg with a scantily clad dancer for an uncomfortably long time, which in any other scenario would’ve worked well to show Anand’s downfall.

Apart from the moral dilemma that those scenes provided, Bahl’s direction seemed considerably bland. There wasn’t a lot of inventive camera movement making the already long-running scenes feel painfully unbearable. The score didn’t help either because its jarring, over-dramatic nature cut down on the emotional depth that the occasional use of silence provided. The winner out of all the elements in Bahl’s tool-kit was his authentic portrayal of the rural areas of Bihar and the drab conditions from which Anand and his group of intelligent students have risen from. The sepia tone of the movie can be a bit boring. But by the time you enter the second act of the movie, I am sure you will get used to it, thereby allowing you to fully appreciate the unbelievable performances that its cast has given.

SEE ALSO: Twitter Turns Every Line From the Super 30 Trailer Into a Gyaan-Filled Meme

How are the performances, especially by Hrithik Roshan, in Super 30 ?

On paper, the highlight of any movie that has Hrithik Roshan in it will be Hrithik Roshan. I mean, he looks like a god and can act superbly. But here he fails to make a solid impact largely due to his horrendous, ill-practiced Bihari accent. Don’t get me wrong. When he’s not talking and he has to express excitement, sadness, pride, fear, despair, Roshan is magnificent (in every sense of the word). You know what he is feeling even before he utters a word because that’s how expressive he is. However, as soon as he opens his mouth to express those very feelings, everything goes downhill in the most tragic way possible. And in doing so he, advertently or inadvertently, makes his co-stars’ performances look greater than they already are.

So, if you’re wondering who’s the highlight of the movie, it is the child actors of Super 30 who steal the show, the limelight and every ounce of the audience’s attention. If I didn’t know better, I would have believed that they were the son of a labourer in a salt-making factory or a manual scavenger or from an abusive household. Yeah, that’s how authentic they are. All of them make for some of the best and most memorable moments in the movie, even going to the extent of selling the by-the-numbers depiction of studying for the IIT entrance exam. The way they break through their fear of being unable to talk in English, despite an ill-timed song dropping on them out of nowhere, feels cathartic and helps understand the level of stress and oppression they’ve suffered since they were born.

SEE ALSO: Dear Bollywood, Your 'Brownfacing' of Actors Is 50 Shades Of F***ed Up

Mrunal Thakur isn’t provided little-to-no layers to her role. So, she does the best thing that she can do: look cute. Pankaj Tripathi (who, in my opinion, should’ve been cast in the role of Anand Kumar) and Aditya Shrivastava chew through their scenes like its nothing and will probably make you wish for spin-off stories of their own to show their characters’ rise because they’re just so damn good! Vijay Verma and Amit Sadh do their best provide cameos where they display their fine acting skills. Virendra Saxena, Nandish Singh and the actress playing Anand Kumar’s mother get an ample amount of screen-time but are largely forgettable because they rarely serve to move the plot forward.

Final verdict

Despite a shaky lead act and an overdose of drama, Super 30 manages to focus on the viability of education due to its script and talented cast of child actors. And although it is helmed by a director enveloped in heaps of controversy, I feel that it will hold a place in the heart of every person aspiring to make a place for themselves in the race of life as it successfully points out the ‘crabs in a bucket’ mentality that India has been suffering from forever.

Cover artwork by Dhawal Bhanushali/Mashable India

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Super 30 (2019) Review: Another Spurious Chapter In The book of biographical cinema

We have seen mathematicians in Good Will Hunting and The Man Who Knew Infinity. We have been introduced to Bihar and its culture through numerous films. We might know both its sides. Of its luxurious heritage as well as its current resourcelessness. We do not expect cinema to capture all the paradigms but we can surely hope for an honest execution which is harmless to take home for when lies decorate your platter, you become a slave to stereotypical imagery and a prejudiced outlook. Super 30 is another shameless movie that dishes out lies in the name of biographical cinema sprinkled with a pinch of truth.

Adapting to the beaten-to-death narrative structure of a much-obliged student Phugga (Vijay Verma) telling the story of his master, Anand Kumar, the life of whom this film revolves around, Super 30 comes out as anything but a film on the life of Anand Kumar. I’ll prevent an ordered comparison of the real-life events with those shown in the film in order to keep this as spoiler free as I can. Even I don’t mind exploiting cinematic liberties and diversion from factual details as long as it doesn’t lose its realistic ground. But I am totally against this gameplay in which filmmakers cash on our appetite for inspirations through exaggerated retellings reeking of poor craft.

Not only it is shocking to see how juvenile and rudimentary of an approach has been adapted to tell the life of a Bihari and his conditions, but it is also irritating to witness the distortions made with the events to create a larger than life hero, who already is larger than life hero and didn’t require a mythological treatment to come out as a demigod. It simply injects random traits about Bihar and Biharis to convince us of the settings with zero amount of ground research. Just because you know litti-chokha is a traditional delicacy from the culture doesn’t mean Biharis are eating litti-chokha every time it’s some celebration. Because people from the east (Bihar, eastern UP, Jharkhand, Bengal, and Assam) carry a certain tone in which they substitute singular personal pronouns with their plural forms, the substitution is not enough to get the accent and language right per se.

Related to Super 30 Movie – [Watch] Super 30 Trailer Re-imagines The Life Of Bihar’s Genius Mathematician Anand Kumar

Every other sentence is forcefully shoved down our senses as if it’s a revelation to the central character. Even the most ordinary of things are made to sound like some eye-opening truth, accompanied by extremely loud music.

They ensure that they don’t go all white on Anand Kumar. How courageously they show him getting blinded for money and taking a path we wouldn’t want him to and how cunning is this effort of setting a contrast between the first and the second half when the character reincarnates, actually is, becomes pellucid as we progress to the film’s pre-climax.

Not only that the film is marred by its contrivance but also gets gunned down by deficient character development pertaining to unnecessary subplots. The dialogues are banal and unexciting. The sound design is ruptured. And the editing is the biggest of all evils. Going through the film is equivalent to taking a drive through rugged terrain.

The screenplay is a set of cinematic episodes carefully designed to evoke certain forms of emotions from the audience, which the director treats as juvenile throughout. How else would you make us laugh, cry, angry, and motivated through the course if we are not considered dull-witted creatures who abhor subtlety? Event A is happening, event B starts dominating the screen, event B supersedes, event C germinates meanwhile, event B ends, the director reminds us of event A which hadn’t concluded, event A completes itself, event C follows. The climax is predictable and yet heart-warming for its inherent attributes.

Related to Super 30 Movie – Article 15 (2019) Review: An Outsider’s Outburst

Anay Goswamy’s eyes through the lens, however, make the film look beautiful. Super 30 earns substantial scores as far as its cinematography is concerned. Adding on to its positives, the acting performances are splendid. Pankaj Tripathi does what he does best and Hrithik Roshan charms with his mannerisms. However, he terribly fails when he speaks. He convinces with his body language but disturbs with his vocals. The kids show immense potential and come out natural to the backdrop.

The film laments upon the shortcomings of our social structure and the advent of linguistic & class barriers in a rough yet important method. It works when it asks us to look beyond its cliched approach but remains unsuccessful in crafting a trustworthy portrait of its region and characters, both.

In its entirety, Super 30 is a disheartening failure. Anand Kumar deserved an attempt with a greater amount of integrity and authenticity. But since he was involved in the process as much as anyone else from the crew, he gets a fair share of this burden.

Super 30 Movie Links – IMDb , Rotten Tomatoes

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Super 30 Movie Review: Masala filmmaking wrecks this real-life story

Rating: ( 2 / 5).

It makes sense that a film about a mathematician turns out entirely formulaic. Regardless of that, Super 30 , a biopic on Patna educationist Anand Kumar, is never quite the masala potboiler it wants to become. The emotional beats are grand but disingenuous, while the wit is hollow. More frustratingly, the background score — usually an enabler of high drama — functions as a spoiler here. This is a film too eager to give away the answers, against the diktats of its straight-laced protagonist. 

Hrithik Roshan plays Anand Kumar, though we don’t see him yet. The film opens with one of his students, now an accomplished super-achiever grown into Vijay Varma, detailing his journey to a crowd. He’s speaking in Hindi — not a limitation on his part, just a precursor to another point. “I like the English language,” he says, “But  growing up, it stood in our path like a rock.” 

Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Mrunal Thakur, Pankaj Tripathi Director: Vikas Bahl 

Linguistic disparity is the biggest problem raised in Super 30 , even worse than class. The film cuts back to the past, where Anand, following an uphill origin story and having founded his disruptive IIT-coaching programme, finds a solution. He motivates his students to stage a scene out of Sholay , but in English. Lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya proffers ‘ Basanti No Dance ’ — a smart riff on the most famous Hindi film dialogue ever. But the film overplays this hand, and the scene becomes a clamorous sing-off between rich and poor students. Super 30 has a bad habit of running its merits into the ground.  Director Vikas Bahl’s templated thinking gets annoying. At one point, Anand faces off against his arch rival (Aditya Shrivastava). The confrontation is dramatic as it is, but Vikas needs an additional gust of wind to howl through the scene, tousling the hero’s hair. This brand of gale-force filmmaking grates with the nerdy subject, as children use math to ward off assailants while their teacher swindles people for ration. “Necessity breeds invention,” says Anand smugly, in a film clueless about both terms. 

Hrithik is woefully miscast in the role. In parts where the brownface blends in, the accent bloats up. Everyone speaks with a drawl, including Mrunal Thakur’s Supriya — an early love interest whose face (to Anand’s immense disappointment) eludes the Golden Ratio. Pankaj Tripathi and Aditya Shrivastava are big-movie perfect, while the film’s best performance belongs to the quietly efficient Nandish Sandhu. There’s also Amit Sadh bumbling about, a drunk journalist standing up for his own. 

In one scene, a woman falsely accuses Anand of exploitation. Coming from Vikas, who was exonerated by his producers, this rings vainly cheeky. A character briefly mentions the ‘Nalanda Mahavihara’, the great ancient university of languages and math, but the metaphor is dropped in passing, without care. The screenplay pokes into a lot (brain drain, education, land scams) in a way that feels crammy and unsubstantiated. Some facts are sidelined, while the climax is plainly ludicrous. 

Anand Kumar’s legacy deserves a better assessment. This biopic clears him with straight As. 

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Super 30 videos, super 30   photos.

Brilliant mathematician Anand Kumar helps 30 smart but underprivileged students prepare for entrance exams for the Indian Institutes of Technology.

Genre: Biography, Drama

Original Language: Hindi

Director: Vikas Bahl

Producer: Sajid Nadiadwala

Writer: Sanjib Datta

Release Date (Theaters): Jul 12, 2019  limited

Box Office (Gross USA): $2.3M

Runtime: 2h 35m

Distributor: Reliance Entertainment

Production Co: HRX Films, Reliance Entertainment, Phantom Films, Nadiadwala Grandson Entertainment

Sound Mix: Dolby Digital

Aspect Ratio: Scope (2.35:1)

Cast & Crew

Hrithik Roshan

Anand Kumar

Mrunal Thakur

Ritu Rashmi

Pankaj Tripathy

Nandish Singh

Pranav Kumar

Raghunath Bharat

Veerendra Saxena

Rajendra Kumar

Sadhana Singh

Jayanti Kumar

Sanjib Datta

Screenwriter

Sajid Nadiadwala

Tanvi Gandhi

Executive Producer

Anay Goswami

Cinematographer

A. Sreekar Prasad

Film Editing

Original Music

Production Design

Subrata Chakraborthy

Subodh Srivastava

Costume Design

Niharika Khan

Mukesh Chhabra

Critic Reviews for Super 30

Audience reviews for super 30.

Hrithik Roshan tries hard to get into the character, but succeeds only as much as the film. Overall, the writing is more disappointing than Hrithik.

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“Super 30” Review: A Richly Rewarding Film Powered By An Extraordinary Performance From Hrithik Roshan

Mohnish Singh | Jul 11, 2019

"Super 30" stars Hrithik Roshan in the role of noted mathematician Anand Kumar, known for his Super 30 program for IIT aspirants. Read the review only on STARBIZ.

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With Super 30 , superstar Hrithik Roshan returns to grace the silver screen after a gap of 2.5 years. Helmed by Queen  fame Vikas Bahl , the biographical drama is based on the life of award-winning mathematician Anand Kumar .

Super 30 is one of the hugely anticipated films of the year for a variety of reasons. First, it tells the inspiring story of renowned mathematician Anand Kumar who braved all odds to ensure that 30 talented underprivileged kids tangled in the web of broken dreams and poverty reach the IIT, one of the premier institutes in India. His Super 30 program still continues shaping the future of several underprivileged but deserving candidates.

Second, it brings superstar Hrithik Roshan on to the silver screen after a huge gap of 2.5 years. He was last seen in his home production Kaabil in January 2017. I happened to watch the much-awaited movie at a special media screening held yesterday and here is what I feel about it.

What Is Super 30 All About?

As the name aptly reveals, Super 30 concentrates on noted mathematician Anand Kumar and how he faced every challenge that life threw at him and emerged victoriously. Anand Kumar ( Hrithik Roshan ) is one of the brightest brains in Patna.

Freshly graduated from college with dreams of a promising future ahead, he wants to study abroad, get a suitable job and break free from the shackles of poverty. He even secures admission to Cambridge University, but financial constraints and the sudden demise of his father compelled him to crush his dreams of studying abroad.

He starts selling papads to earn his livelihood. Soon a local coaching owner ( Aditya Srivastava ) offers him a teaching job at his upmarket coaching center which charges a hefty amount from students dreaming to get into the IIT.

It does not take much time for Anand Kumar to realizes that downtrodden children need him more than those kids who think they can buy knowledge with their parents’ money. Kumar sets up his own coaching center and starts coaching 30 talented underprivileged kids for IIT-JEE, the entrance examination for the Indian Institutes of Technology. How he manages to save his center from the coaching mafia and lend every possible support to his kids, fighting against all odds, is what forms the crux of Super 30 .

What’s Hot?

Making a film on a person who is not universally known is not an easy job, but thanks to the makers of Super 30 who did not only invest in such an inspiring story but also ensured that it gets the kind of treatment and richness it deserves. There is not a single department where, as an audience, you feel that the makers have compromised and that is the best thing about this biographical drama. Every once in a while, a movie comes out of nowhere and blow your mind, Super 30 is that film for the year 2019.

Talking about performances, Hrithik Roshan as Anand Kumar is perfect and, also, every bit convincing. Roshan is known as the Greek God of Bollywood who has predominantly starred in chocolate boy and action roles. He has never done before a film where he had to put his star image wholly aside and slid into the skin of a character which does not belong to his world at all. Kudos to the superstar for trying something new and nailing it! He pulls his character off with aplomb.

Besides Hrithik Roshan , other artists that stand out in the film are Pankaj Tripathi and Aditya Srivastava . In every scene that Tripathi features in, he steals the limelight from his co-actor and that includes Hrithik Roshan also. He does not have much screen time, but whenever he appears in the film, he lights up your mood with his impressing act. Aditya Srivastava as local coaching owner looks convincing. Mrunal Thakur , who plays Roshan ’s love interest, makes her presence felt despite having very limited screen time.

Director Vikas Bahl , who rose to fame after headlining the Kangana Ranaut starrer Queen (2014), shows his directorial capabilities once again. His last directorial Shaandaar (2016) was in a big disaster, but Super 30 is sure to make people forget the flak that he received for his 2016 film. Background music by Ajay-Atul is one of the major highlights of the film.

What’s Not?

Though Anand Kumar ’s story is undoubtedly fascinating, and Hrithik Roshan ’s performance exceeds expectations, Super 30 is not flawless just like any other film. The first half of the movie is very strong and on point. It builds huge anticipation for what is coming next. However, as the second half rolls, it feels like the film forgets its singular aim and is trying to focus on too many issues which do not add much to the narrative. But just as your interest level start dipping in the film, Vikas Bahl gets it on track once again. Having said that, the second half indeed needed better editing.

Final Verdict

Super 30 is undoubtedly a must watch that you can enjoy with your friends and family. There is food for thought and food for every kind of feeling in this Hrithik Roshan starrer. It is worthwhile because it has its heart in the right place, because it tells a true story that is every bit inspiring and worth telling, and because Hrithik Roshan has delivered one of his career’s best performances in years. I am going with 4 stars.

Movie Credits

Banner: Nadiadwala Grandson Entertainment, Reliance Entertainment, Phantom Films, HRX Films Director: Vikas Bahl Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Mrunal Thakur, Pankaj Tripathi Music: Ajay-Atul Runtime: 154 Minutes STARBIZ Rating: 4 Stars

>>> See more:  Hrithik Roshan’s "Super 30" Full Movie Download Is Available Now!

• #Super 30 #Hrithik Roshan #Hrithik Roshan's Super 30 #Super 30 review

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Super 30 movie review: Hrithik Roshan tries hard in this ordinary film about an extraordinary man

Super 30 movie review: emotional manipulation gets in the way of inspiration in vikas bahl’s latest film starring hrithik roshan as maths genius anand kumar..

Super 30 Director: Vikas Bahl Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Mrunal Thakur, Pankaj Tripathi Rating: 2/5

When you exaggerate the extraordinary, it looks ordinary. Mathematics whiz and educator Anand Kumar has led a remarkable life, coaching hundreds of underprivileged children past the rigours of the Indian Institute of Technology entrance exams. His story deserves attention, but director Vikas Bahl confoundingly embellishes it into typical filmi fare in Super 30. For some reason, Kumar’s actual triumph wasn’t enough — therefore the filmmakers added clichéd adversity. The odds may have challenged Kumar, but the Hrithik Roshan version features armed hitmen, evil politicians and moustached villains.

Watch | Raja Sen’s movie review of ‘Super 30’

Hrithik Roshan isn’t bad, though his problematic brown face-paint is inconsistent to the point of distraction. The actor plays guilelessness with charm in Super 30 as a Patna boy hungry for the most advanced mathematical equations he can lay his hands on, a boy who hides a smile about a girl shyly behind a gamchha. His eyes gleam only when discussing numbers and talking to students, but Super 30 pushes Roshan into awkward directions — like a nutty Paisa-Paisa song where he’s briefly corrupted by money and tight shirts — and hands him too much melodrama. And, as we all know by now, whenever Roshan needs to dial it up a notch, he lets his nostrils do the emoting.

Still, there is less of that here — at least at the start. I loved the opening gambit, featuring this young man wanting to get published in an academic journal not for prestige but because contributors get a lifetime subscription. The scene where he’s obsessively solving a groundbreaking equation on his walls is reminiscent of Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting, where a janitor was a math genius.

Kumar wins the subscription and gets admission to Cambridge University, but can’t raise the funds for travel, even as his father (played by the reliably excellent Virendra Saxena) overextends himself. He falls back to selling paapad made by his mother, when a coaching institute tycoon called Lallan starts leveraging him into a brand for his institutes.

Also read: Anand Kumar reveals he has brain tumour, says ‘wanted Super 30 to be made while I am alive’

In the film, Kumar opens his own, entirely free institute for 30 kids, which is noble but untrue. In reality, Kumar founded a successful institute which allowed him to support his famed ‘Super 30’ programme. Here the drama comes from poor kids forced to share rice. Set to the operatic background score of an Old Spice commercial, all the emotional manipulation gets in the way of inspiration.

The cast is solid, particularly Aditya Shrivastava as Lallan, who appears to have something up his sleeve even when his character doesn’t. The kids Roshan guides have fun in smartly depicted scenes about math. Then, the genre flips: Kumar is shot in the stomach, and the film turns into ‘Home Alone: Physics Edition.’ Super 30 couldn’t possibly have been written by one of Kumar’s students. It doesn’t add up.

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Raja Sen is a film critic. He reviews Hindi films for Hindustan Times ...view detail

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Home » Reviews

Super 30 Movie Review: This Hrithik Roshan Film Has Heart In Its Head!

Hrithik roshan's spellbinding performance maintains the intrigue..

Star Cast:  Hrithik Roshan, Mrunal Thakur, Virendra Saxena, Nandish Singh, Pankaj Tripathi, Aditya Shrivastava, Vijay Varma

Director: Vikas Bahl

What’s Good: Just doesn’t depend on the ‘intent’, finds it sweet little ways to keep the entertainment intact, it’s a blockbuster show as far as all the performances are concerned with HR leading the pack, Ajay-Atul’s ‘what a wow’ background score

What’s Bad: This kind of subject doesn’t need 154 minutes to establish its point, few pop-emo sequences could’ve been easily avoided

Loo Break: It’s a long film, yes but it’s not as boring to demand a break in between. Interval is the perfect choice for this!

Watch or Not?: I’m someone who craves for real stories to be told if it’s the same case with you then definitely go for it!

We are welcomed by a slickly styled Fugga (Vijay Varma), who’s delivering a speech regarding Anand Kumar (Hrithik Roshan). Into a flashback scene, the story rewinds to 1996 where it all started. Anand, a brilliant student, gets declined from a college library just because he wasn’t a student. This hurts and inspires him at the same time, which leads to getting him selected for Cambridge.

Life had other plans for Anand, as, after suffering a personal tragedy he’s left with not many options. A local coaching owner picks him up and offers a job as a teacher. But, even that wasn’t he wanted so he moves towards his aim creating some good and many bad friends. He leads a group of 30 students, educating them for free to prepare for IIT’s entrance exam. How he dodges the obstacles and reach till the finish line is what the story is all about.

Super 30 Movie Review: Script Analysis

Not one, but Hrithik Roshan nails two ‘Pursuit Of Happyness’ moments in the film. The major fault of the script is to follow a similar format of biopics done before. You’ll be reminded of PadMan at some places, Sui Dhaaga at certain. Apart from these issues, the movie has a lot to offer and HR makes sure it’s delivered with sublimity. Few gimmicks here and there put a brake on the continuous connect. A. Sreekar Prasad’s editing surely needed some cutting, as it’s too long at 154 minutes.

Super 30 Movie Review: Star Performance

It’s not at all easy to get your act together in a movie such as this. Full marks to Hrithik Roshan for not losing his head for a single scene. He performs each scene as his first & excels in them. Yes, the dialect fluctuates from being a caricature to actually nailing it. He has mastered the look and the walk, which helps him to express with perfection. Nandish Singh as Hrithik’s brother delivers a confident performance. His smart and sensible screen presence aids the leads to do their job.

Pankaj Tripathi owns every scene he is in. Not a big role, but a memorable one. Watch out for an outstanding scene between him and Aditya Shrivastava (CID Fame). Aditya aptly supports the story with his performance. He doesn’t go over-the-top stereotypically and fits in the cast well. All of the kids know what are they doing. They’re guided well with the dialogue delivery and screen presence.

Vijay Varma shines in a cameo, holds to the emotional quotient of his character. Mrunal Thakur looks beautiful! Her chemistry with HR is the base of a love story which should’ve been explored a little more than it was.

Super 30 Movie Review: Direction, Music

Vikas Bahl goes all rustic to depict a time which could’ve been shown in a  simple manner. The colour correction, props used aren’t enough to match the aura of the 90s. I would’ve loved more of a ‘Yeh Meri Family’ treatment to the subject. Because of the weak art direction, Vikas misses many opportunities to pick up some scenes. He leads some brilliant emotional sequences, too, but overall there’s something missing.

The most important thing this movie missed is a few ‘Amit Trivedi’ level songs. Ajay-Atul does well with the background score, that’s probably one of the best takeaways from the film. Songs, though situational, had more potential to uplift the narrative. Niyam Ho remains the best of all; it’s placement also a lot to do with it being so good.

Super 30 Movie Review: The Last Word

All said and done, Super 30 surely has the heart at its right place i.e in the head. Hrithik Roshan’s spellbinding performance maintains the Intrigue. Watch it for what it has to say, rather than what it shows.

Super 30 Trailer

Super 30 releases on 12th July, 2019.

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Super 30 Movie Review

With few twists and turns, ‘Super 30’ ends up as a boring film on a righteous, virtuous and honourable man

Hrithik Roshan, Mrunal Thakur, Pankaj Tripathi

First of all, we are inundated with biopics. In a country as large as India, there are bound to be bad boys and good boys. The idea is simple – polish the bad apples, as in ’Sanju’, and squeeze the good ones for juice, even if there isn’t much. The recent glut of movies on interesting people, including many who are still relatively young like Anand Kumar, and who are yet to complete their life’s work, is indicative of a profound crisis of creative writing in Hindi cinema. Clearly, there is a drought on good fiction, and so film writers and makers want to pick up readymade, nylon shirts and pants, that just need tailoring adjustments, instead of going through the hard work and original thinking involved in writing and designing movies that come from their own heads.

Kumar is a mathematician from Bihar who set up a coaching institute for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds in Patna called ’Super 30’, and got most, if not all of them, to successfully crack the IIT Exam. In the context of the money driven private education businesses flourishing in Bihar and elsewhere, this is a wonderful achievement, and it takes a man with inherent nobility and deep social consciousness to re-connect with his own less than privileged background, and work on providing opportunities to such promising students for free.

But Anand is just 46 years old, and though he has figured out how to work the entrance system for such exams since 2002; passing one does not signify academic excellence in the sciences. The film’s research and script tells us nothing about what his students have done since getting into IIT. Did they thrive at the Institutes, did they come up with outstanding scientific work and go on to contribute to academics or industry?

And what about Anand himself? The opening of the film shows Anand (Hrithik Roshan) as a mathematician of promise, having published papers on number theory in international journals. What has happened to that aspect of his life? All these questions are dropped like hot potatoes, so that the movie can go full throttle for the emotional jugular of the caste system, and can tell you a story like ‘Lagaan’, in which the ruling classes are challenged for their assumed privileges – in an ‘exam match’.

The casting director has done his auditioning well, and the faces of the chosen 30 look appropriately etched with deprivation. The make-up specialist has made Hrithik Roshan look less of a film star by changing his skin tone to khaki. But the light eyes are left intact, and they persist in shining through the muck on his face. With his less than perfect Bihari accent, and by his wearing of the same hang-dog expression right through the film, Hrithik does not exactly set the screen on fire as Anand Kumar.

Only one scene in the film touches a raw nerve. This is when Anand’s kids sit together in a classroom with students from an expensive coaching institute, for a competitive test. They fare poorly, and when Anand asks them why, they say that they were psychologically numbed by their wealthy fellow students who, till recently, were their masters; in whose homes they were servants or maids or drivers. The sense of being trapped, yet again, in a class/caste system, momentarily gave them an inferiority complex, and jinxed their answers in the test. It is a poignant explanation, and the scene is done well.

But essentially, this is a premature biopic, made before the subject has completed his life’s work, and before a true assessment of Anand’s contribution to education can be evaluated. But such is the hurry to find material with a heroic, or even an elevating content, that national and international recognition through newspapers and awards, seems enough to produce a melodramatic movie, full of cliches, on the man’s trials and tribulations.

With few twists and turns, ‘Super 30’ ends up as a boring film on a righteous, virtuous and honourable man.

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Release date: 12 July, 2019

Super 30 movie.

SUPER 30 is the story of a selfless man fighting for the cause of education-for-all. The year is 1996. Anand Kumar (Hrithik Roshan) has completed his graduation and is passionate about mathematics. He’s so good in the subject that he is felicitated at the hands of the education minister (Pankaj ...  Tripathi). Anand manages to solve a complex mathematical problem, which has baffled scholars all around the world. His feat lands him a seat in the prestigious Cambridge University. His father Eshwar Kumar (Virendra Saxena) is a postman who takes out his PF to fund Anand’s foreign education. When the money falls short, he and Anand knock at the doors of the education minister, who had promised him help. But the minister refuses to help. Meanwhile, Eshwar passes away one day suddenly. He was the only earning member of the family and hence, Anand sheds his ambition and begins selling papad to survive. One day, he bumps into Lallan Singh (Aditya Srivastava) who runs Excellence Coaching Centre, an institute for those giving the IIT-JEE exams. He is aware of Anand’s brilliance in mathematics since he was in the college when Anand was felicitated. He gets Anand enrolled in his coaching institute as a premium teacher. Since Anand’s teaching methods guarantee success, he becomes quite sought after. Excellence Coaching Centre management even promote themselves by using Anand’s picture on their banners. Anand’s financial condition also improves as he’s even made one of the signatories. However, he soon realizes that some brilliant students aren’t getting a fair chance to excel in life because of their underprivileged background. Overnight, Anand quits Excellence Coaching Centre. He starts his own centre, where he decides to teach 30 students for IIT entrance exams for free. Not just that, he even arranges for their accommodation and food. Lallan obviously is livid and he tries his best to persuade Anand. When nothing works, he tries to demotivate Anand, saying that all his students who fail will go back to their impoverished lives. It’s important that each and every student of Anand manages to crack the IIT exam. What happens next forms the rest of the film.

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Super 30 movie review: Hrithik in brownface, patchy storytelling and a narrow take on caste dilute a gutsy theme

Super 30 comes across as a project that someone somewhere lost interest in at some point and then it all came apart.

From a Hindi film industry that has for decades now barely acknowledged the existence of India’s caste system, it is quite something to see two films rooted in caste discrimination - Article 15 and Super 30 - within a span of a fortnight. Let us take a minute to celebrate that change.

The question now is this: should we be so grateful to artists who bring up issues rarely visited by their colleagues that we let their faux pas, prejudices, poor research and poor storytelling pass? Or do we call them out on their follies in the hope that they are genuinely invested in their chosen themes, and will try to do better next time?

The answer is: say it like it is. Of course a star as major and glamorous as Hrithik Roshan opting to play a character from a lower caste is a turning point in this insular industry which has long assumed, as it once did about women protagonists, that heroes from marginalised communities can only yield tragic weepy tales that have no place in the mainstream. What is lovelier still is that Super 30 is based on the uplifting story of a real-life achiever. That it comes to us at a time when any critique of caste is slammed  as being “Hinduphobic” makes it courageous too.

No doubt these are laudable starting blocks. But Super 30 dilutes itself in multiple ways. First, the brown makeup used on Roshan for the role of Anand Kumar signals a stereotypical understanding of what it means to be lower caste, offering us Hindi cinema’s caste equivalent of the white Western world’s brownface . “He doesn’t look Dalit” was a criticism levelled at Prakash Jha for casting Saif Ali Khan as a Dalit in Aarakshan . Those pointing fingers should have told us what that “look” is since Dalit is not a race or ethnicity but a pan-India social categorisation signifying extreme ostracism and a forced adherence to certain professions. If Team Super 30 was indeed convinced that Hrithik’s light complexion would never be found on a member of a lower caste, it is worth asking why they did not go in search of a dark-skinned actor instead of bottles of brown make-up, because the caking up of a well-known face is distracting, to say the least. And if their argument is that all they wanted was for Roshan to resemble the man he is playing as closely as possible, well then, videos and photographs of the real Anand Kumar will tell you that he looks nothing like the Bollywood hottie with or without makeup, so that claim does not hold water.

Second, while Super 30 is gutsy off and on with its caste references, it is also simultaneously hesitant in addition to betraying a limited understanding of this deeply entrenched social dynamic.

So, bravo for showing a character from a dominant group proclaim in Anand Kumar’s presence that social divides are written into ancient scriptures and epics, since this is in truth how upper castes continue to justify their claims to supremacy (the Censor Board forced the producer to dub over the word “Ramayan” in that scene, and what we hear is the person saying “Rajpuraan”). Bravo for having a poor, lower-caste postman tell a post-office employee named Trivedi to quit his fossilised thinking and realise that we live in an age when talent, not heredity, will determine who rules. Bravo for the poor man who describes an inconsiderate medico as a “donation-waala doctor”, because those opposed to SC/ST reservations use “quota-waala” as an epithet and claim that meritocracy is their only concern but do not raise similar objections to academic institutions in which privileged classes can buy admission. Bravo.

(Applause fades) There is no explanation though for why Anand’s caste is never specified in the film but only implied through conversations in more than one scene. It remains the elephant in the room whose presence has been alluded to but not stated in black and white. That Which Must Not Be Named. But why?

Writer Sanjeev Dutta also confuses class with caste when he shows the snobbery of Anand’s upper-caste girlfriend’s father melt away as soon as the boy starts making big money. The point about caste is its permanence, the fact that you cannot rise up a ladder and shrug off the label that was pasted on you at birth even if you exit poverty and illiteracy through hard work. Considering that the Dad had already had a conversation with Anand in which he condescendingly referred to “your people”, it seems unlikely that this man would forget his contempt overnight because that is not what we see happening in the real India.

Super 30 is based on the life of  mathematician-educationist Anand Kumar from Bihar . This is a highly fictionalised account, as you will gather if you read media reports about Kumar starting from the 2000s. It is also an account that steers clear of all question marks raised in the media about Kumar, but since those question marks themselves are murky and require a thorough investigation by an unbiased reporter on the ground, I am not going into a comparison between the film and reality.

Roughly speaking, Anand in the film, like the real guy, is a mathematical genius whose academic brilliance gets him admission in Cambridge University. His impoverished family cannot raise the funds to send him there though. A chain of circumstances leads Anand to a coaching institute for IIT JEE aspirants where he becomes a star teacher and starts raking in good money. However, he decides one day to give up his increasingly comfortable life and set up a free coaching school for underprivileged children where he will train 30 chosen ones for the IIT entrance exam each year, providing them with food and a house for an entire year as he trains them. He calls it Super 30. This leads to a clash between Anand and powerful players in the state’s coaching institute racket.

With all its problems, there is a certain poignance to the account of Anand’s early life as we witness the love within his family despite their financial struggles, the endearing flirtations between his father and mother, his father’s wisdom and mother’s joyousness, and the malice of those who claim to care about the downtrodden but in fact only care for their votes.

After Anand launches Super 30 though, the storytelling becomes as uneven as the film’s understanding of caste, getting downright lacklustre in large portions. The director seems to lose his grip on the narrative as it rolls along, and it does not help that Roshan’s performance is patchy at best. This is not even counting the fact that at 45, the actor is playing a character who is in his teens at the start of this film and in his 20s through most of the rest of it. This is also not counting the fact that Anand in the late 1990s is styled to look like a character out of a K.L. Saigal movie.

Few Bollywood stars can summon up pain in their eyes as Roshan can, but there is a tone and mannerism he used in his performance as a mentally challenged youth in Koi Mil Gaya (2003) that creeps into his dialogue delivery and occasionally even his facial expressions here in Super 30 too.

It is a tone he has dipped into each time he has been called to portray simplicity in his career - in earlier roles it usually came up just in passing and was therefore tolerable, but it is hard to ignore in this film in which simplicity is the cornerstone of his character.

Hrithik Roshan is a gorgeous looking man but he has always needed a firm directorial hand to guide him. His Dad Rakesh Roshan, Khalid Mohamed ( Fiza ), Karan Johar ( K3G ), Ashutosh Gowariker ( Jodhaa Akbar ) and Zoya Akhtar ( Luck By Chance, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara ) have brought out the very best in him. Vikas Bahl has not.

The supporting cast of Super 30 is better. Mrunal Thakur, who was excellent in Tabrez Noorani’s Love Sonia last year, is given little to do as Anand’s girlfriend here, but she pulls off that little well. The child actors are saddled with unmemorable characters that have no depth or expanse, but show flashes of how good they might be in better written roles. Aditya Srivastava is solid as Anand’s unscrupulous professional rival. Sadhana Singh and Virendra Saxena are absolute darlings as Anand’s parents. And Pankaj Tripathi as a corrupt politician manages to be both hilarious and menacing at the same time.

Once the script and direction of Super 30 begin to wander all over the place, there is no turning back. For a start, no one on the team seems to have stopped to ask how Anand intended to sustain Super 30 after exhausting his savings. The real Anand Kumar runs a parallel coaching centre from which he earns high fees that he then pumps into his classes for the poor, but there is no mention of it here nor of any other source of income, perhaps because that coaching centre has been a subject of some controversy . The director’s lax grip on the reins screams out most in the scene featuring the children singing the song ‘ Basanti No Dance’ that was clearly designed to be moving but is curiously emotionally cold.

Ajay-Atul’s music deserved a sturdier platform. As things stand, it is one of the best things about Super 30 . ‘ Basanti No Dance’ and ‘ Question Mark’ have an attractive beat and rhythm. ‘ Jugraafiya ,’ with its lyrics by the inimitable Amitabh Bhattacharya, is entertaining. And the end credits roll on a haunting melody titled ‘ Niyam Ho .’

Super 30 comes across as a project that someone somewhere lost interest in at some point and then it all came apart. What else but casualness can explain the misspelling of the production house’s own name in the final credits?

Director Vikas Bahl’s Super 30 comes to theatres i n the shadow of an allegation of sexual violence against him that emerged in October 2018 in the wake of the #MeToo movement in Bollywood . Bahl’s decline as a filmmaker began long before #MeToo though with the release of the boring as hell Shaandaar starring Alia Bhatt and Shahid Kapoor in 2015. It is hard to imagine that the man who made the fabulous Queen (2014) starring Kangana Ranaut also made Shaandaar . Frankly, with all its failings, Super 30 is a qualitative step up for him.

Bahl’s new film is not insufferable and soporific like  Shaandaar , but it is misleading to mention it in the same breath as Anubhav Sinha’s Article 15 , as I did in the first paragraph of this review, without a clarification. Article 15 is a deeply affecting study of a police officer whose caste privilege has given him the luxury of growing up ignorant about caste until it is rubbed in his face in his adulthood, at which point he sets out to educate himself through interactions with his colleagues and a Dalit activist. Caste should have been omnipresent in Super 30 but by the film’s second half it has become almost an aside while the good folk battle conventional Bollywood villains. Someone somewhere gave up on Super 30 a while back, and it shows.

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'Super 30' movie review: Masala filmmaking wrecks real-life story

It makes sense that a film about a mathematician turns out entirely formulaic.

Regardless of that, Super 30, a biopic on Patna educationist Anand Kumar, is not quite the masala potboiler it wants to become.

The emotional beats are grand but disingenuous, while the wit is hollow. 

More frustratingly, the background score – usually an enabler of high drama –functions as a spoiler here. This is a film too eager to give away the answers, against the diktats of its straight-laced protagonist. 

Hrithik Roshan plays Anand Kumar, though we don’t see him yet.

The film opens with one of his students, now an accomplished superachiever grown into Vijay Varma, detailing his journey to a crowd.

He’s speaking in Hindi – not a limitation on his part, just a precursor to another point. “I like the English language,” he says, “But  growing up, it stood in our path like a rock.” 

Linguistic disparity is the biggest problem raised in Super 30, even worse than class.

The film cuts back to the past, where Anand, following an uphill origin story and having founded his disruptive IIT-coaching programme, finds a solution. He motivates his students to stage a scene out of Sholay, but in English.

Lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya proffers Basanti No Dance – a smart riff on the most famous Hindi film dialogue ever.

ALSO READ:  Hrithik Roshan releases new song from 'Super 30' titled 'Basanti No Dance'

But the film overplays this hand, and the scene becomes a clamorous sing-off between rich and poor students. Super 30 has a bad habit of running its merits into the ground. 

Director Vikas Bahl’s templated thinking gets annoying.

At one point, Anand faces off his arch-rival, Aditya Shrivastava.

ALSO READ:  'Super 30'- Indian community members in USA evince interest in Anand Kumar biopic

The confrontation is dramatic as it is, but Bahl needs an additional gust of wind to howl through the scene, tousling the hero’s hair.

This brand of gale-force filmmaking grates with the nerdy subject, as children use math to ward off assailants while their teacher swindles people for ration.

“Necessity breeds invention,” says Anand smugly, in a film clueless about both terms. 

Hrithik is woefully miscast in the role.

ALSO READ:  Super 30 founder Anand Kumar suffers from brain tumour

Parts where the brownface blends in, the accent bloats up.

Everyone speaks with a drawl, including Mrunal Thakur’s Supriya – an early love interest whose face (to Anand’s immense disappointment) eludes the Golden Ratio.

Pankaj Tripathi and Aditya Shrivastava are big-movie perfect, while the film’s best performance belongs to the quietly efficient Nandish Sandhu.

There’s also Amit Sadh bumbling about, a drunk journalist standing up for his own. 

In one scene, a woman falsely accuses Anand of exploitation. Coming from Vikas, who was exonerated by his producers, this rings vainly cheeky.

A character briefly mentions the Nalanda Mahavihara, the great ancient university of languages and math, but the metaphor is dropped in passing, without care.

The screenplay pokes into a lot (brain drain, education land scams) in a way that feels crammy and unsubstantiated.

Some facts are sidelined, while the climax is plainly ludicrous. Anand Kumar’s legacy deserves a better assessment. This biopic clears him with straight As.

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Karan Johar reviews 'Crew', calls it 'unapologetic and super fun'

Karan johar reviewed 'crew', where he praised the film and the performances of the actors. the film has had a successful opening weekend, grossing over rs 30 crore at the domestic box office..

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• Karan Johar reviewed 'Crew'
• He praised the performances of the cast
• 'Crew' had a successful opening weekend, grossing over Rs 30 crore at the domestic box office

'Crew' has received a favorable reception since its release, and now Karan Johar has also weighed in with his review. On April 1, he shared his thoughts on the film on Instagram. Directed by Rajesh A Krishnan, the movie features a stellar cast including Tabu, Kareena Kapoor, Kriti Sanon, Diljit Dosanjh, and Kapil Sharma. It released on March 29.

He wrote, "CREW was unapologetic and super fun!! The girls killed it! Kudos to the power house and my Gemini soulmate @ektarkapoor. The fashionably forever filmmaker @rheakapoor. The eternal fountain of genius talent @tabutiful. The always awesome and super gorgeous @kritisanon and last but never the least my POO forever!! What a super star you are my bebo @kareenakapoorkhan! #girlpowerrules and badhai ho Rajesh Krishnan! (sic)"

He added, "So much love to my favourite Shobha aunty and Jeetu uncle! And to proud parents and my dearest friends @anilskapoor and @kapoor.sunita Shout out to @diljitdosanjh for his incredible swag and mega screen presence! (sic)"