CHANDU CHAMPION

Sonali Kulkarni in Kabir Khan’s latest Chandu Champion, headlined by Kartik Aaryan, based on India’s first Paralympics medalist Murlikant Petkar, concludes the film by saying there is dust on his chapter in the book of India’s sports history. It made me think this story needed to be told as it wasn’t like many of those sports dramas or a biopic. It had that differentiating factor, and Kabir Khan’s gaze towards it made the film feel different.

Chandu Champion isn’t just the story of a paraplegic who won a gold medal in the Olympics and made his country proud. The film isn’t aiming to gain sympathy towards physically disabled achievers/athletes. Kabir Khan tells what happens when there is that requisite and immense amount of willpower and resilience when you are on your path to achieving your goal in life. If you decide, you can overcome every obstacle life throws at you, and Chandu Champion depicts this wonderfully. While this is the film’s highlight, the filmmaker couldn’t refrain from hiding the genericness of it, and that is painfully evident in the execution.

I almost lost all my interest in the film in the first scene. I am bored with the narrative structure followed by Chandu Champion, where the story is narrated in the flashback. When you return to the present time, you know it’s time for an interval now. Voice-over may be okay sometimes, and abrupt cuts also work, but designing a scene just to get into the flashback is a spoon-feeding approach I can’t accept. Then, the linear narrative structure that starts with the protagonist’s childhood and faithfully proceeds forward, highlighting the milestones in their personal and professional lives, looks unacceptably dated for a 2024 movie.

If Kartik Aaryan’s entry in Chandu Champion doesn’t remind you of Hrithik Roshan’s entry in ‘Agneepath‘, something is definitely wrong with you. In the second hour, I wondered if this one would eventually feel like Diljit Dosanj’s ‘Soorma‘. The ‘Satyanaas’ song sounds like ‘Galti Se Mistake’ from ‘Jagga Jasoos‘ and looks like ‘Havan Karenge’ from ‘Bhaag Milkha Bhaag‘. Even some portion of the climax reminded me of the latter. While all these were enjoyable fares, remembering them while watching a Kabir Khan film is something I can’t wrap my head around. He can most definitely do lot better.

Pritam’s music is instantly likeable, and Chandu Champion isn’t any different. I was surprised to see myself taking a moment aside to note them. My problem with them is that their involvement in the narrative feels like their presence is to either forcefully generate a particular emotion or use it to take the narrative forward. While the latter is still fine when it feels like this approach is taken only to entice the viewers and nothing else, it is disheartening. It’s not a good feeling when you wonder how different it would have been without a song at this moment. If this entire approach of all these elements was intentional, it’s just sad.

It’s an unpopular opinion, but I didn’t find Kartik Aaryan’s physique any exceptional in Chandu Champion. I felt he had put in the requisite effort to do justice to the part. There is nothing mind-boggling about it. He was just doing his job right. I wish he had put in the same amount of effort to get that effective emotional beat. In many places, I felt like the actor was trying his best but not getting it right. I could see Kartik Aaryan from other movies while playing Murlikant Petkar. In a scene where he is requesting, had he not been crying, he wouldn’t have looked any different than what he looks like in his famous monologue scene.

The rest of the Chandu Champion cast, which is so good, barely registers. Vijay Raaz’s earnestness struggles to look and feel magical. My heart wept to see Bhuvan Arora not shine at all. He is brilliant but ain’t that impactful. Yashpal Sharma and Rajpal Yadav are good and do justice to their respective parts, but they aren’t doing anything different from what we have seen them doing. Hemangi Kavi and Sonali Kulkarni are comparatively impressive in their small parts. Shreyas Talpade, Pushkaraj Chirputkar, and Brijendra Kala are over the top, and a part of the scenes I felt shouldn’t have been there in the movie in the first place.

Chandu Champion visually looked good and, more importantly, natural. I was happy to see the film being shot at the original/outdoor locations. I feel it made a lot of difference to the viewing experience. The recreation of a certain era may have looked a little under the mark, but the neat VFX/CGI and refraining from overly stylish camera work during the war or game portions was a good way of not making the movie look like any other film in a similar zone. Even a simple drone shot capturing a bus in the Maharashtrian landscape looked pleasing. The usual slow motion in the swimming portions was sans any visual drama. Sometimes, these tiny things matter in the overall opinion of the film.

Chandu Champion could have definitely been a better-made or approached film. It need not have doubted the audience’s intellect so much and taken that narrative structure. Some factors led to me having a favourable opinion of the film. I did not mind the movie at all because of the clear intent of Kabir Khan and the beautiful core of the film. This one may look like the same old inspirational story of an athlete, but how it inspires makes all the difference. With a few complaints, I exited happily and almost satisfied with Chandu Champion.