Movie Review – “Chhalaang” Shows What A Leap Of Faith Can Achieve

Amazon Prime Video’s new comedy-drama directed by Hansal Mehta, “Chhalaang,” is the story of a lazy unambitious PT (physical education) teacher in a small-town school in Haryana whose simple life gets disrupted when two new people walk into it. 

Mahinder “Montu” Hooda (Rajkummar Rao) is quite content with his life where he lives with his parents and teaches PT at his old high school, a job he didn’t get by being qualified but through his dad (Satish Kaushik) putting in a good word with Principal Usha (Ila Arun). Montu could care less about the students’ physical activity or the school’s sports prospects. He, in fact, happily gives away PT periods to other subject teachers who need it to complete their syllabus.

Enter Ms. Neelima “Neelu” (Nushrratt Bharuccha), the new Computer teacher at the school, a Delhi-educated modern-day woman. Our hero, Montu, instantly falls head over heels for her and does everything he can think of to impress her. Enter I.M.Singh (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub), the new government-appointed PT teacher at the school and the villain in Montu’s life. Montu realizes that three things are now at stake – the job he never really cared about, the love of his life, and most important of all, his pride. Will Montu quit his job to protect his pride, or will he stick around to prove his worth?

While the first half of “Chhalaang” appears to be more of a typical Bollywood rom-com, the second half picks up pace turning the movie into an overall family entertainment package. As Nushrratt Bharuccha had herself described it in her exclusive interview with DissDash, the movie was made for children and is a sports comedy. The latter half of the movie focuses on sports education and how little attention it receives from Indian parents. As Montu describes it in one of his dialogues – we all want our children to become Sachin Tendulkar and Saina Nehwal, but none of us want to put in the effort to be their parents.

Rao and Bharuccha have great on-screen chemistry. With Rao’s incomparable acting style, Bharuccha’s killer expressions and a great supporting cast – Kaushik, Ayyub, Arun, Saurabh Shukla as Shukla ji, Baljinder Kaur as Montu’s mother, Naman Jain as Bablu and Garima Kaur as Pinky, you’ll be entertained with funny well-timed dialogues in this feel-good, light-hearted movie released during Diwali 2020.