Gowri movie review: Samarjit Lankesh makes promising start; film leaves much to be desired

2/5

Gowri movie story: Gowrishankar (Samarjit Lankesh), the son of a traditional singer, is born hard of hearing, but makes do by lipreading when spoken to. Despite this challenge, he not only has an affinity for music, but also aspires to become a singer. When his father gives Gowri an ultimatum to follow in his footsteps or leave home, he chooses the latter.

He is eventually spotted by Samantha (Saanya Iyer), a rich do-gooder, who is looking at creating a band with differently-abled talent and giving them a shot at glory at a popular reality show. Getting on to the show, though, comes with challenges.

Gowri movie review: Gowri is the launchpad of Samarjit Lankesh, the son of filmmaker Indrajit Lankesh and is, as expected, a complete showreel for the youngster. In just over 2 hours, Indrajit packs in as many elements as possible that allow his son to flex his skill sets. The youngster is easy on the eyes, has a fantastic physique, dances like a dream and fight too. Perfect material for a pin-up boy. Samar’s got what it takes to become the next heartthrob and Indrajit makes no bones about showing his son off.

The problem with this is that in the pursuit of establishing Samarjit as the hot new boy in town to look out for, the story becomes an afterthought. Watching Gowri reminded me of Ek Love Ya, Trivikrama and Yuva, where Raana, Vikram Ravichandran and Yuva Rajkumar, respectively, were also given platforms to show off all that they can do, but the films suffered in terms of content.

Gowri has pretty much the same problem. The story is basic at best, with pretty much everything that unfolds onscreen designed for Samar to look pretty, smile, cry, dance, fight, etc. A lot of the sequences are quite random, like, for instance, a fight that begins with Samar and the bad guys doing wheelies and more bike acrobatics, and throwing in a few punches. What’s worse is that the fight happens because Samantha chooses an open field for her band to practice under floodlights.

That was not the first time I wondered why this motley crew would jam out in the open, instead of an enclosed space. Indrajit, it appears, was also gunning for visually pleasing stuff, so he has the band practice under a waterfall too. Really? Thisis a band with physical impairments with vision, speech and missing limbs, but then drone shots of the beautiful environment they are in are more important, you see. 

It is a brave move, though, having a protagonist with a disability and not making a mockery of it. However, this is where the filmmaker and actor duo could have taken a lot more care to do better. There are inconsistencies in the depiction of Gowri’s hearing issue – for someone who apparently needs to lipread to understand what is being said to him, he seems to manage quite well, even when people speaking to him are not in his direct line of sight. But for one last conversation with his mother, who has the same impairment, the duo never sign to each other.

There’s just so much that could have been done with that, and the team could have taken a leaf out of the Academy Award-winning movie Coda about a mostly hearing-impaired family, or Riz Ahmed’s portrayal as a drummer who slowly loses his hearing in Sound of Metal. I even thought of the hearing-impaired singer Mandy Harvey who was on America’s Got Talent a few years ago and sang an original number. One of the most striking things about Mandy is that she needed to be barefoot to feel the vibrations of music instruments and get her rhythm right.

When the launchpad is that of a star kid, no doubt, the focus will be on him/her as the case may be. Gowri is all about Samar, even though it is also the big-screen debut of Saanya Iyer. She really deserved a better start, with a meatier role. I could be wrong, but I think she did not dub for the role. It just didn’t sound like her, a deduction based on having seen enough of her during Bigg Boss Kannada Season 9.

Gowri movie verdict: All fluff and no substance just won’t cut it with audiences. Samar will, in all likelihood, get a good female fan following. He makes a promising start, which would have been even better if the film was armed with a strong and engaging story.