Review: 'Chintoo' (Marathi)

Film: Chintoo (Marathi)
Director: Shrirang Godbole Cast: Shubhankar Atre, Vibhavari Deshpande, Subodh Bhave, Dilip Prabhavalkar, Bharti Achrekar and Satish Alekar
Rating **1/2

In her quest to get us to read Marathi, Mom insisted on us reading a page out of Marathi newspapers. Every morning, we’d make a dash for Sakaal and mother would be mighty pleased. The grandfather, however, wondered how the exercise of reading newspapers wound up in 5 minutes and led to giggles all around. The reason was a boy named Chintoo. And it almost became a ritual, fighting for the paper, reading Chintoo, giggling and then reading the strip out to our grandparents.

The 20-year old boy wonder finally gets to escape from the comic strip world and reaches his fans through the silver screen.

Chintoo, Pappu, Mini, Baglya, Raju, Neha and Sonu are done with exams and have an agenda for their summer vacations. They want to play a cricket league of their own where they are Wanarwede Warriors (In Devnagri, ‘KHA’ is written in a fashion that it could be easily mistaken for Ra and Wa, hence the pun). It is their quest to beat the cheating team Vinchoo Warriors at cricket by building their own stadium against all odds. But when their playground is claimed by Guru, the local gunda to set up a Chinese stall, Chintoo starts seeing it as India-China war. As the Chinese stalls makes it impossible for Chintoo and his gang to play, they go about cracking windows, breaking into homes and more. How will Chintoo and his friends get their playground back?

While the film is laced with innocent humour that has you in splits, unfortunately, the children struggle to perform in some scenes. At certain points, they are completely in sync with their roles but at times, their performance ends up being rather amateurish. The script makes up for the loopholes in the plot, where the characteristic Chintoo humour makes you laugh, however, at certain points, you do find yourself feeling rather bored. The film has a massive hangover of last year’s Chillar Party and the fight for the playground is wrapped up quite hastily.

The music in the film is brilliant, especially the song that Chintoo sings for his Mom. The lyrics are heartwarming and yet simple.

One is left wondering that despite having so many things going for it, why does Chintoo make you feel underwhelmed. Could it be that Chintoo strips hold their own in three to four panels but lacks the punch to make a full-length feature. I don’t think so. A less clichéd plot without a deliberate lesson at the end saying kids must play outside and not on Play Stations and X Boxes could have done wonders. Also, characters like Joshi Kaku and Satish Dada, are watered down to fit into the screenplay which dilutes out the essence of the relationship they share with the protagonist.

Also, the product placement in the film is so in-your-face, the hand-wash may well have been a face-wash. A tip: If you’re using product placement for better hygiene, don’t let the actors leave the tap running while washing their hands. Kids could use a lesson in being environment friendly too, you know!

While it wasn’t the same as reading a brand new Chintoo comic each morning, the film did get me laughing and giggling for parts. Watch it sans any expectations and you might be surprised. If your kids don’t know about Chintoo, they will probably enjoy the film a little more.

But it is far from a fitting tribute to the magic created by Charuhas Pandit and Prabhakar Wadekar.