Reviews
Movie Review: English Vinglish (2012)
Sridevi plays a middle-aged Maharashtrian housewife Shashi Godbole. Shashi may be weak at speaking English, but that doesn’t deter her from being the wonderful mother, loving wife and doting daughter-in-law. However, her husband Satish Godbole (Adil Hussain) and her daughter (played by Navika Kotia) never appreciate her efforts and are rather embarrassed of the fact that she can’t speak English. Her son Sagar (Shivansh Kotia) although does play mama’s boy-cum-khabri, snitching on his teenage sister every now and then. Shashi runs a small business from home. She makes wonderful ladoos (something which her husband takes huge pride in, albeit with a touch of contempt) and sells them around the locality.
Already saddened by the behaviour meted out to her, she has a higher mountain to climb as she has to travel all the way to New York to help out her widowed sister (played by Sujata Kumar) with her daughter Meera’s wedding. It is at New York where Shashi, who finds herself completely alienated in a country where knowing English is considered a ‘must’, realizes that she will have to fend for herself and learn the language. So, she ends up at a 4-week class where she meets people who come from completely different backgrounds (African, Spanish, French, Chinese and Pakistani), all of them with a common grievance – they don’t know English. The film traces Shashi’s journey through these 4 weeks as she learns lessons far more significant than just English!
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