Super 30 (2019) Review!!!

Synopsis – Based on life of Patna-based mathematician Anand Kumar who runs the famed Super 30 program for IIT aspirants in Patna.

My Take – I think we can all agree that teachers, whether good or bad, tend to leave a lasting impression on our lives. While we may not realize it at the said moment, the impact on our thinking and approach does tend to manifest itself later in life. Here, director Vikas Bahl‘s film wants us to believe that it is not just the brilliant student’s efforts, but also the teacher’s hard work which helps them in achieving their goals.

Joining in the brigade of incoming biopics, this film is based on the life of Anand Kumar, an educationalist and mathematician hailing from Bihar, India, who fought odds to launch and sustain his Super 30 project, a tiny coaching institute born within the confines of his dingy rural setup.

Every year, he selects and trains a group of 30 underprivileged students to crack IIT’s extremely competitive Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), effectively changing lives for good. The character is inspiring not only because he shows others how to accomplish their ambition, but also because he leaves his own aspirations aside.

While the film found itself midst controversies via Vikas Bahl‘s Me Too movement, and smear campaigns questioning Anand Kumar’s life achievements, the film does manage to be very timely, especially considering how education system in India is in desperate need of change.

Yes, the film is deeply flawed and follows a very basic template, but it is also one of those films that you may end up liking despite everything, simply as the intent of the film connected with you. Honestly like most reviewers, I too was not happy with creative liberties taken, especially in the second half, yet I was able to connect with the emotion the film was trying to communicate, despite sensing its obvious compromises.

And for his performance as Anand Kumar, Hrithik Roshan deserves all the laurels and accolades he can get. It takes guts to accept such a real, still living, idealistic character and make him come alive on screen. It takes a great talent to break through the shackles of your image and play a de-glam role, and here Hrithik Roshan just embraces everything.

The story follows Anand Kumar (Hrithik Roshan), a prodigious academic talent who belongs to a poor but larger-than-life family. Despite winning a gold medal in college, Anand spends most of his time just studying higher education thesis’s, and looking for the golden ratio on the face of his upper middle class girlfriend Ritu Rashmi (Mrunal Thakur), but his big break comes when he receives an invitation from the University of Cambridge to join them, as he ended up solving a previously unsolvable mathematical solution.

Unfortunately his family is not able to rustle up enough money to send him, leaving his disappointing postman father with a fatal heart attack. Accepting his fate, Anand is forced to join his mother in selling papad door to door that is until he comes across Lallan Singh (Aditya Shrivastav), the CEO of Excellence Coaching Centre, who had witnessed Anand’s Gold Medal win, and offers him a job.

Soon enough, Anand becomes a star professor, earning more than he can spend, with Lallan cashing in on Anand’s reputation and thereby enhancing his and his center’s financial status. But when Anand finds out about other poor but deserving students missing out on their opportunities to apply for IIT-JEE, he leaves his lucrative job and decides to start his own free coaching class with the help of his younger brother Pranav (Nandish Singh). He accepts 30 students, houses, feeds and begins teaching them, however, he knows, their struggles are only beginning.

The script follows a clichéd narrative, which makes it obvious that director Vikas Bahl is not trying to make it look like an extremely fresh take, with writer Sanjeev Dutta, giving emphasis on the class divide which made Kumar start this Super 30 education program. By all accounts, this film is an enormously inspiring story of a man who braved all odds, fighting tragedy financial poverty, attacks and even near-death to deliver one of the noblest services needed in the world: teaching.

His drive to impart knowledge made him a shining beacon of inspiration across the globe which, sadly didn’t take much notice until a New York Times article put him in the spotlight. And more so, one of the film’s strongest bits is the commentary it offers on the education system and the mafia that governs the entire coaching business.

There’s strong motivation in seeing Kumar’s Super 30 shut down, merely because its success would spur more such clones and hamper, or potentially throw into question, the exorbitant fees charged by these lavish institutes who have turned education from a birthright into a money-making machine.

Issues like casteism and opportunity plague the poor class and those bits hit really hard. In a particularly depressing bite, Kumar points out to a child that he died the day he was born poor. Vikas Bahl’s direction too goes with the script. It is terrific in the pre-interval portions, a lot of sequences reminding us of the crispness and trenchant wit of his ‘Queen’ and also does a decent job of weaving in the themes of corruption, ambition, and classism into the story.

The film has its heart obviously in the right place, and many lines spoken by Anand are inspirational. But like so many great-in-the-first-half misadventures, the script goes woefully wrong in the second half. Already a length affair, it makes short shrift of many important things like explaining how Anand and family survive economically against the odds and how the students are clothed, fed and housed, and takes recourse to many tropes and clichés.

Here we see how villain sets out to divide and conquer by attempting to murder his virtuous prodigy, apparently for the crime of violating the basic capitalist commandment of “thou shalt make a profit.” The generally likeable Lallan transforms into a scowling villain, in cahoots with the corrupt education minister of the state, Devraj (Pankaj Tripathi), upset by Anand’s decision to give away his skills rather than letting Lallan continue to make big money for him.

The screenplay focuses on their confrontation with the protagonist, rather than the real story, which is Anand’s attempts to get these 30 students past the line. The worst comes in right at the climax, were the students tackle an armed attack on the hospital where Anand is admitted scientifically. The whole sequence is just bizarre and if such an incident actually happened it should have been more convincingly depicted. This hodgepodge of subplots and confrontations subtract from the strength of the first part of the film.

As I mentioned above, contrary to expectations, Hrithik Roshan absolutely nails his character. The earnest portrayal of the character has contributed immensely in making us feel for the struggle of this character. Mrunal Thakur does manage to hold her own in an underwritten role, Aditya Srivastava was menacingly good.

In supporting roles, Pankaj Tripathi is yet again brilliant, while Virendra Saxena and Nandish Singh too play their parts well. Amit Sadh also delivers a small yet memorable performance. The child actors also look very convincing in their parts. However, Rajesh Sharma, Vijay Verma and Karishma Sharma are wasted. On the whole, ‘Super 30’ is a flawed yet inspirational film that deserves a watch for its underdog tale and Hrithik Roshan‘s performance.