'Chhichhore' Review: Sushant Singh Rajput and Shraddha Kapoor's film namaste celebrates life and friendship

• Film: Chhichhore (Comedy, Drama )
• Cast: Sushant Singh Rajput, Shraddha Kapoor, Navin Polishetty, Varun Sharma, Tushar Pandey, Tahir Raj Bhasin and Prateik Babbar
• Director: Nitesh Tiwari
• Written By: Nitesh Tiwari, Piyush Gupta, Nikhil Mehrotra
• Duration: 2 hours, 23 minutes
• Rating: 3.5

Story:

Anni (Sushant), Sexa (Varun), Acid (Navin), Mummy (Tushar), Derek (Tahir), Bevda (Saharsh) are a group of six friends, given the tag of ‘Losers’, studying at an engineering college and butt of all the jokes. They want to win the coveted General Championship (GC) in the field of sports against Raggie (Prateik Babbar)’s team. Anni falls in love with and marries Maya (Shraddha Kapoor). They separate from each other but one moment changes their lives when their son Raghav fails to clear the preliminary engineering test and attempts suicide. As Anni and Maya try to cope with the situation, it leads to a reunion of sorts.

Review:

The film, in a nutshell, talks about the importance of life and how it cannot be measured in terms of success and failure. Director Nitesh Tiwari uses the parallel track of staying in present and going in a flashback to relive the gang’s college days.

In terms of acting, all the actors complement each other rather well and their chemistry seems organic.

Sushant as Anni is full of life and leads from the front. You can clearly see the imprint of Nitesh in his latter years. Varun and Navin steal the show with their witty, funny dialogue and light up the screen every time they appear on it. Tushar as Mummy is brilliant and his scenes with Sexa and Acid, are again outstanding, too.

Even though there are as many as six primary characters, the director and writers have developed each one completely and one doesn’t overshadow the other. They are also not shown as too-good-to-be-true like movies on friendship usually do. Everyone is filled with insecurity and flaws. Sushant manages to play the transition part between college days and middle age effortlessly, even as a father who wants to have a nurturing and friendly relationship with his son and who’s not rigid in his ways.  After her performance in Saaho, Shraddha again doesn’t have much to do. Also, unlike all the others, her appearance does not change much as a mother. Her part has much room for improvement. The least amount of work has been done on her character, which comes across as muddled. Her scenes with Sushant gives you the feeling of just going through the motions. On the surface, there seems to be some resemblance with 3 Idiots, but the context of the movie is completely different, and it is not preachy. Tahir and Prateik’s performances are also commendable and all the sports matches (chess, cricket, carrom, basketball, athletics) have been shot meticulously.

The only question is — if the friends were so close, how did they drift apart and did not stay in contact for 20 long years? At the drop of a hat, they come together, when Anni calls them.

The use of prosthetics is quite weird and questionable as it makes the characters look much older than they actually are in the film. The flashback- present pattern gets repetitive.

However, Nitesh has proved his class with the movie, and this is a bigger deal than Dangal as it had Aamir Khan as the lead.

The real hero of the film is the screenplay and how proper attention is given to it by the makers. Chhichhore is a simple story of how we make our lives difficult by focusing on matters that are beyond our control and not staying in the present. The film also dwells on the relationship between parents and child and reiterates that life is much more than passing a test or what other people think of you.

Verdict:

The film is masterfully made and must not be missed. The film talks about camaraderie and not getting carried away with success or failure. If you want to relive college days, you must watch it.