Review: WHY CHEAT INDIA

Why Make A Film That Fails To Keep Your Interest?

2 stars

Mini Revew:

There are parents who want their kids to have an engineering degree come what may. There are agents who help ‘crack’ the exams for a fee. The film tackles the problem of rampant cheating in these exams but it gets so preachy about a failing system and talks so much, you cannot help but yawn…

Main Review:

‘I don’t want to be a hero, and I don’t have the time to play the villain,’ Emraan Hashmi says, as he pulls off the role of a heartless agent who uses bright young chaps to take the exams for stupid, rich kids for money. The bright chaps (usually from poor backgrounds) earn money, and rich dads get the satisfaction of being the parents of ‘an engineer’.

The scams attached to ‘coaching’ classes that prepare young men and women for professional courses have led to police action, but with politicians deeply involved with these agents, the scams just don’t stop. Plus the ambitious hoards of parents, willing to put up their life savings and then paying cash to scamsters when they realise that their kids cannot clear those tough exams, make it impossible for the vicious cycle to end.

That is the reality today. And yes, it is a disease in India’s education system. But does that mean we the audience have to suffer a film that drags on and on with Emraan Hashmi preaching to us how good he is when he takes money from the rich and gives some of it to the poor deserving students?

Emraan Hashmi plays Rakesh Bhaiya, who is the best of the best agents. He is earnest when he plays the cool, collected bad guy, and looks rather fit. The audience is not supposed to hate him because he has a pathetic life (a really awful and brainless wife, a father who does not think much of the son but uses his money), because he is really helping poor students make money, and also because it’s the fault of the parents who are ambitious. Have I said this before? Yes. That’s what happens in the movie, over and over again, and his brazen tactics just become boring. Then the last twenty minutes of the movie get interesting because the girl he’s romancing (Shreya Dhanwanthary) turns the tables on him and he loses his magic touch. But he’s unrepentant, and the film ends with ghastly slides that give us numbers of fake universities and colleges, data on student suicides, and numbers of people who perhaps cheated to join professional colleges…The film should have been called Why Bore India instead.

(This review appears on nowrunning dot com)