Gauri Shinde’s English Vinglish (2012) Movie Review

Cast: Sridevi, Mehdi Nebbou, Priya Anand, Adil Hussain, Amitabh Bachchan (Guest Appearance)

Director: Gauri Shinde

Producer: Sunil A Lulla, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, R. Balki

Music Director: Amit Trivedi

Runtime: 136 minutes

More than 250 films in her career Sridevi, the first Superstar of the 80’s and 90 is back after a 15-year gap with English Vinglish. Ad filmmaker Gauri Shinde is making her directorial debut with English Vinglish. The movie aims to please and entertain the audience for the full TWO hour and 16 minutes and that’s exactly what it does.

Sashi (Sridevi), the wife of Satish (Adil Hussain) and the mother of Swapna and Sagar(Shivansh Kotia), is a home-maker who runs a home-based business of cooking and selling laddus. She is looked down by her husband and teenager daughter for not being able to understand or converse in English, though her mother-in-law (Sulbha Deshpande) is generally supportive of her role of a homemaker.

Sashi’s sister Manu Desai (Sujata Kumar) is a widow living in New York with her two daughters Meera (Neelu Sodhi) and Radha (Priya Anand). Sashi has to go to New York to assist her sister in the preparations for Meera’s wedding, all by herself, while her husband and children join her later. How a “free-thinking woman” Sashi manages to go to New York and copes with the language difficulties there forms the rest of the story.

The performances by this talented cast are tuned to perfection. Each character has something to offer the audience and there are so many moments where you will laugh-out-loud.

Sridevi as Shashi woo everyone with her performance, a PERFECT COMEBACK. She is perfect as caring Mother-longing WIFE-Sincere Student. Shivansh Kotia (Son) & T.Navika Kotia (Daughter) of Shashi suit their roles. Adil Hussain is okay in his role, his character could have been better. Priya Anand is cute in her role. Cory Hibbs, provides a good entertainment. Amitabh Bachchan’s cameo is cute (loved the way he dubs Sourcecode movie). Shashi’s English class is well cast and there’s a South Indian, a Chinese, a Spanish, Gay teacher, French and an African who were just perfect in their performances.

The key to the film is the pacing. It really grabs you from the get go and goes through the motions pretty quickly. Everything is set up nicely and even feels a bit slow at times. It felt like a perfect cut film where everything fell in to place where it needed to. The characters and the actors all worked well together and the outcome was successful.

Scenes I Liked:

Mehdi Nebbou (French) – Sridevi’s scenes
Scenes Between Sridevi – Navika Kotia
Michel Jackson act by Sridevi
Pre Climax Laddu Scene
Sridevi final speech

What’s great about English Vinglish is that every element relies on the other. The performances are great because the script is excellent. The script is excellent which inspires the director and cinematographer to do it justice. Everything comes together beautifully on this picture.

English Vinglish – A MUST WATCH for emotionally engaging script with Sridevi’s solid performance that grips you to the very end.

Survi Review: 3.5/5

Theatrical Trailer: