Gandhi, My Father

*Film: Gandhi, My Father*

Directed by [Feroz Abbas Khan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feroz_Abbas_Khan). It was produced by [Anil Kapoor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anil_Kapoor).

The film stars [Darshan Jariwala](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darshan_Jariwala), [Akshaye Khanna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akshaye_Khanna), [Bhumika Chawla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhumika_Chawla), and [Shefali Shah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shefali_Shah).

**==GANDHI KA NAAM BADNAM NA KARO==**

**Review by Dr Usman Latif Khawaja**

**Rating – ONE STAR**

If you had any expectations from this movie, forget them and just watch **Richard Attenborough's** version of *Gandhi*again, as **Mr. Kapoor and Feroz Abbas Khan** are entirely lost as to how to interpret one of the few non-controversial figures from the Indian subcontinent.

The movie kicks off with a dying Harilal being admitted to a state hospital, as no one believes ke he is Gandhi-ji's son, and he definitely didn't deserve to be either. My sympathies are with Mr. Gandhi for being blessed with an elder son who was a bigger idiot and nincompoop than the bumbling robot Bumblebee in *Transformers*, and that's an understatement, as Bumblebee is lovable but Harilal is detestable. But he is portrayed as being a poor little sacrificial lamb in this absolutely disgusting movie.

The movie is embellished with some ludicrous sequences where Akshaye Khanna overacts to the level of becoming a black spot on his father Vinod Khanna's good name, just as Harilal was for Gandhiji. For as far as I know, Vinod Khanna never overacted in any movie I have seen so far, but then the flawed script and characterisation rule the entire duration of two hours, which I found really hard to sit through. The caption "short and sweet" doesn't apply to this monstrosity.

We are shown a Gandhi who takes naked showers with his three sons while his wife peeks on them, and then has to disown his eldest son as he marries without his permission in an elaborate marriage without his parents' presence, and Harilal still expects his father to be ecstatic with his decision too.

I am sorry, but Mr. Gandhi knew his son better than Harilal knew himself as he tries to bash some sense into his son's empty head. Harilal tries to lie and trick his way back to India from South Africa under a false pseudonym and is caught red-handed by the British. It must have been an awful embarrassment for the great man, but he forgives his son. But for how long? Gandhi was neither a god nor a prophet, but a great visionary and a revolutionary philanthropist who saw things from a communal point of view.

Now, if the contradictions are not already evident in the script, then go watch this silly misadventure as Harilal fails three times in matriculation examinations while **procreating four kids**. It's easy to see what is on his mind foremost. As if that is not enough, he also tries to force his father to cheat his brothers out of their inheritance. His failures are constant, and Gandhi has to put up with them as well as supporting him and his four kids.

Give me a break. I wonder how many people can identify with this as being a bad father, but that is what the movie implies, and it is very boring and disgraceful to see a rather deplorable private affair being made the subject of an international venture, which was put forward as a very prestigious project too by its makers.

Yet he keeps badmouthing his father for not sending him to England to become a barrister. If pi.. could only fly, then it would be a very happy world indeed. Then he has the audacity to start shouting at his neighbours and his wife to prove he is the victim while his father is a villain, in one of the most overacted and embarrassing scenes ever in Indian cinema during a pooja procession.

I would have taken a cane to my son by this time. It's understandable: poor Mr. Gandhi was a non-violent man, so he was unable to give Harilal the good hiding he deserved well early in his life.

By this time, Akshaye Khanna and the man playing Gandhi were so irritating and idiotic that I was in splits, and let me tell you, Gandhiji looks like a bad spoof of Hitler in some scenes.

Twentieth-century India is exhibited as the sixteenth century, with men wearing huge turbans and all women dressed like in *Saraswati Chandra* in ten yards of sarees, and everyone is wearing the latest makeup too. If that's not enough, the music is like you are attending a funeral ceremony rather than a period biopic, with monotonous hymns resounding the entire time, as if the visuals were not enough to torture the poor audience.

The photographer tries to make it look like picturesque postcards from South Africa and exotic Hindu India. That was exactly what Gandhi was fighting against, as he stood for more than just looking after your own selfish interests and your own flesh and blood, but rather the whole community and social justice. But the director and producer seem to have no vision of that and seem to have read a bad book and decided to turn it into a movie for the Western audience by making it look exotic, but it's an utter failure, and they fall flat in the gutter for their distasteful exorcism on Mr. Gandhi. And as for the West, the movie has found just ridicule, or some critics have spared it as it is associated with Mr. Gandhi and his revered name.

All I can say is, Mr. Anil Kapoor, you deserve the worst flop of the year so far to your credit, and think again before your next production. In conclusion, a movie devoid of any motive, vision, humour, or any purpose, and only bent upon exploiting the good name of Mr. Gandhi, and deservedly the worst flop of the year despite its ambitious targets. This is Akshaye Khanna's final epitaph after *Naqaab*, and this idiosyncrasy. He needs to become a monk and leave Bollywood alone, as he is one bad actor who has two fixed expressions on his face and makes this the most tiresome and boring movie of the year.

Please stop giving us bad movies in the name of serious cinema, as I have had enough, and this is testing our patience too far. I can tolerate a **cash** which doesn't have any pretensions to be a masterpiece but a piece of pure entertaining trash, but not this realistic junk which is supposed to be quality cinema but has no emotional or artistic impact or qualities whatsoever.

I am sorry, but I was utterly disappointed by this movie. There were about 20 people on Sunday in a cinema with a capacity of 500, and most of them were laughing while Akshaye was crying, and this in the U.K., where people usually watch movies in pin-drop silence. Usually, someone would have protested, but the movie didn't deserve anything but derision and mockery.