Never Ending Movie Carnival
Never Ending Movie Carnival
Dasvi Movie Review: Abhishek Bachchan is outstanding in a delightfully funny coming of age
What: Dasvi movie review – Abhishek Bachchan passes with flying colours in a delightfully funny coming of age.
Dasvi movie synopsis
Ganga Ram Chaudhary (Abhishek Bachchan), a powerful Haryanvi politician is sentenced to imprisonment for an educational scam. The 8th pass street smart Jaat in his absence appoints his timid garelu (homely) wife Bimladevi (Nimrat Kaur) as the Chief Minister.
In prison Ganga Ram is having his way, a room with all the necessities, - phone, desktop, Tv etc plus the same caste jailor played by Manu Maharishi at his service. Ganga Ram is having a picnic in Jail.
Enters the no-nonsense Superintendent Of Police, Jyoti Deswal (Yami Gautam) the righteous SP is not at all awed by Chaudhary’s aura.
Happy days of Chaudhary are over, he has to eat what other inmates eat in the jail, have to follow the rules and has to work. Interestingly, the politician Chaudhary gets the job to make chairs.
Unwilling to work as a normal qaidi, Chaudhary seeks studying as rescue/excuse to quit the labour of making chairs.
How Chaudhary’s sudden manipulated quest to study and appear for Dasvi (10th standard exams) becomes his motto of life after a serious provocation by SP Jyoti who calls him “jaahil, unpadh gawaar”.
On the other hand, Chaudhary’s wife Bimladevi gets smitten by the lust of power and turns cunning and shrewd in ensuring that his pati dev fails the dasvi exams and she remains the CM of the state interestingly called Harit Pradesh.
How will Chaudhry pass both the test forms the crux of this movie.
Writers Ritesh Shah, Suresh Menon on a story by Ram Bajpai and debutant director Tushar Jalota make a quirky comment on the importance of education. The message does comes out and underlines the fascination of Dinesh Vijiyan’s Maddock films with topics centred around education – Angrezi Medium, Hindi Medium, now Dasvi, ib ke bahravi hogi ke (next what bahravi aka 12th ?!).
The most striking feature of Dasvi is the way Chaudhry learns from his experience and how he makes teachers (guru) from his fellow inmates.
A midget cycle thief Ghanti (Arun Kushwaha) turns into a maths teacher. A learned librarian Rae Bareilly (Danish Hussain) gives gyan on syllabus, books etc, an imaandar (honest) engineer who is wrongly jailed and is the cruel result of the greed of politicians like Chaudhry teaches him science and finally our rashtra bhasha Hindi is taught by ( well for that you will have to watch the movie).
Ghanti, Rae Bareily, the honest engineer, etc form a group of teachers who prepare Chaudhry for his Dasvi.
The teachers/ gurus teach Chaudhry from his point of view, citing example from politics which make this Dasvi lessons an interestingly delightful watch.
Abhishek Bachchan as Ganga Ram Chaudhry is outstanding, his dialect, diction, body language is pitch perfect. Excellent.
Nimrat Kaur as Bimladevi is a delight.
Yami Gautam as SP Jyoti is fabulous.
Arun Kushwah as Ghnati is a stealer.
Danish Husain as Rai Bareli is marvellous
Manu Rishi Chadha as the jailor has its moments
Chittaranjan Tripathy as the IAS officer – the PA of the CM is fantastic as well.
Dasvi comes with few influences, the Deja vu of Huma Qureshi’s Maharani during Nimrat Kaur swearing in ceremony is unavoidable.
The Forrest Gump feeling while Chaudhry studies and finds himself involved in those historic events and the hurried election results in the end are off putting.
You will notice Abhishek Bachchan when he writes on paper, its different, the same way is the message of importance of education in Dasvi, its different - weird, quirky but scores the winning marks in a delightfully funny manner. The performance are A grade and I go with an extra for Abhishek Bachchan’s outstanding portrayal as Ganga Ram Chaudhry, He is superb.
Dasvi is streaming on Netflix and Jio Studios.
A child born from life & fed by cinema. A filmi keeda from child & a film journalist for the last fifteen years. a father, seeker, foodie who loves crooning bollywood melodies twitter.com/cineblues More By vishal verma