Goodbye

Two north Indians give birth to a South Indian accent Rashmika? Neenah Gupta and Sunil acting is too much to miss, Amitabh gets chNce to show his acting skills beautifully, the movie shows step by step procedure on what happens after death, Hum saath saath hain, was an unrealistic movie, this movie was more realistic, the movie made me emotional, I truly loved it, all actors played there role beautifully except Rashmikas over acting and South accent in hindi born to North Indian couples, the way Sunil shows how a religious man never gets angry is good, Rashmika is angry throughout the movie for no reasons, all the time,

Cannot say that the movie is flawless, but certainly watchable. As always, Amitabh and Neena Gupta are amazing and other actors have done their part well. A typical family drama with emotional angle+ few comedy scenes especially with unexpected performance of Sunil Grover. Few scenes will bring tears to your eyes if you usually get emotional during movies (I do!). The movie will definitely remind you of Irrfan's dialogue from Life of Pi : "I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye." And I don't understand such a low rating. Definitely you can give it a try.

The film may have hundreds of problems, and a boatload of flaws but through apt execution, it evolved to be something that was able to hold its ground pretty well.

Amongst a bunch of speculative rationales for why it may have succeeded, I genuinely feel their utilization of human emotions got the job done here, or you can say it is because of the meaningful confabulations deftly laid out in a back-and-forth fashion or the actors who have had to partake in those didactic chatters or perhaps a mixture of both that ultimately led this narrative to a heartwarming closure.

This is a film that will remind you of your close ones, more meaningful to those who had lost someone they dearly cared about. This tale will make you remember the memories you shared, all those joyous moments you spent together, and even those arguments and fights you got yourselves into, both good and bad things populate their respective spaces in your unstained vase of recollections.

Keep it safe, don't ever let it go, it's too precious.

Tragi-comedies are a very tricky genre to execute well on screen. While there have been numerous cases of success in Hollywood like "Amélie (2011)", "The Darjeeling Limited (2007)" and "Death At A Funeral (2010)", the genre is still in its nascent stage in Bollywood and India in general with only a few hits to its name, that too primarily after their OTT releases-like "Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi (2019)" and "Pagglait (2021)". So it was surprising that director Vikas Bahl, the visionary behind "Queen (2014)" and "Super 30 (2019)" chose the mainstream theatre release format for this genre-blender and it seems like this bravery was ill-conceived.

Amitabh Bachchan stars as "Harish Bhalla", the patriarch of the Bhalla household, who is just coming to terms with the sudden death of his loving wife "Gayatri", played by the effervescent Neena Gupta. Tasked with informing their busy and distant children of the tragic news, how he navigates the ensuing funeral and the idiosyncrasies of the family as they come together after a long time form the rest of the narrative. Rashmika Mandanna plays "Tara", Harish's only daughter and designated black sheep, after her consistent scorn towards his religious conservatism, made worse by her choice to go against his wishes and date a Muslim.

Despite its intriguing premise and a group of fine actors, a disjointed screenplay that moves along like a sequence of unrelated scenes without any real cohesion makes "Goodbye" a tedious watch. The director that gave us such natural comedy in "Queen" struggles to mount situations that deliver genuine humour, with most of the gags coming across as forced and contrived. Rashmika struggles with her Hindi accent as expected, this being her first Hindi original movie, but makes the best of an underwritten role, especially in the emotional sequences.

We are noboby to judge an Amitabh Bachchan performance and the veteran tries his best to salvage a meandering script. A scene where he gives a final goodbye to his beloved wife is a sure tearjerker but such sequences are few and far between in an otherwise, largely lackluster project which oscillates between drama and comedy inorganically, failing to deliver in both genres with equal aplomb. "Goodbye" is one film where I couldn't wait for the film to end and say "Goodbye" to an abysmal theatre experience. Not recommended!

The film falls flat in its comic timing though the comedy should have been dark or slightly dark like most funeral comic family dramas do.. There is nothing wrong in the writing apart from certain scenes being overtly on-the-face comedy (the beginning scenes) that is obviously forced on the characters to enact. The writing is slow in the first half and the to & fro to the past and present is definitely not working. The dialogues are again very silly, neither realistic nor cinematic or maybe it's the dialogue delivery because once Sunil enters the frame the dialogues are interesting even after he leaves the frame. There are illogical scenes too (car phone speaker scene).

The casting of Rashmika Mandanna is what brings the bigger part of the film down. She can't speak hindi well. Her pronunciations are yuck. Whenever she speaks either she tries hard on concentrating on her pronunciations or on her acting because none of them works. I think its the language that is holding her back from acting. There is no free flow of emotions.

The film's best moments are by Sunil Grover's Panditji character. Not that I am a Sunil fan but the character is like the savior in the midst of bad acting. Amitabh Bachchan is as usual good but his character is written half heartedly. He has done justice to his role though.

Neena hardly has any dialogue and yet she is a ray of sunshine. The lady who plays the care taker has very little to do but her simple looks and expressions are so much better than Rashmika's acting.

In short, letting the badly written first half, Rashmika's presence & pronunciations, the film in general has a good flow and is worth a watch.