Sardar Ka Grandson is produced by who’s who in Bollywood, Bhushan Kumar, Divya Khosla Kumar, Krishan Kumar, Monisha Advani, Madhu Bhojwani, Nikhil Advani and John Abraham under the banners T-Series, Emmay Entertainment and JA Entertainment. That’s quite an exhaustive list of makers! Owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, Sardar Ka Grandson has opted for an OTT release and was premiered on Netflix, the multilingual digital platform.
Story
“Life mein do cheezein badi bekaar hai, khaana bina achhar and life bina pyaar” (Two things in this world will always lack flavour: meals without pickle and life without love). This is the surmise on which Sardar Ka Grandson was developed and presented.
Amreek Singh (Arjun Kapoor) runs a logistics company, packers and movers to be precise by the name ‘Gently Gently’ in Los Angeles along with his partner girl friend Radha (Rakul Preet Singh).
Amreek receives an SOS from India as his grandmother, a 90-year old Sardar Kaur (Neena Gupta) was terribly sick in Amritsar. As a result, Amreek rushes back to Amritsar to fulfill the last wish of his grandmother. That is to visit her ancestral home in Lahore, Pakistan which she built along with her deceased husband Gursher Singh (John Abraham) before partition in 1946.
Amreek has no time and the condition of Sardar was not feasible enough to make her travel all the way to Pakistan. So Amreek has to use his expertise by taking the help of Radha to proceed with structural relocation. But its not as easy as it sounds and there are many hurdles in the path of Amreek as he gets ready to confront the bureaucracy in the form of police and city mayor in Pakistan. What happens next is what Sardar Ka Grandson is all about.
Performances
More than Arjun Kapoor, its Aditi Rao Hydari as young Sardar and Neena Gupta as the older one who showed their competency levels in enacting the complex characters. But Neena Gupta could not raise the bar due to various deficiencies in her characterization hence her character gets forgettable once the film is over. Though it’s not fair to compare her in Masaba Masaba and Sardar Ka Grandson, but still the former remains as the best performance by her in recent times. On the contrary, her performance in Sardar Ka Grandson actually pales in comparison with Masaba Masaba.
Arjun Kapoor has done nothing new as he is quite familiar with these kind of Punjab ‘Munda’ roles and he has done fairly well.
Rakul looked pretty and gave out her best performance while Kanwaljeet and John Abraham were appreciable in their respective roles.
Behind the scenes
The dilemma whether to make a fun filled film or an emotional drama has taken its toll on the narrative as a result neither the comedy nor the emotion fail to tug the heart despite presence of a sound premise and ensemble star cast. Unfortunately, the amateurish handling of the script by the noted writer Anuja Chauhan and the nonchalant presentation by the director Kaashvie Nair has robbed Sardar Ka Grandson from its freshness.
The silver lining are the songs composed by Tanishk Bagchi and the song ‘Main Teri Ho Gayi’ sung mellifluously by Milind Gaba and Pallavi Gaba appeals a lot.
The cinematography by Mahendra Shetty is colourful, remarkable and it aptly reflected the mood of the film which spans across the generations with special emphasis on locations during partition and its aftermath.
Sheetal Sharma and Vijay Ghodke deserve special mention for their splendid work in costumes and art departments respectively which added the extra finesse to the visuals on screen.
Final Verdict
Sardar Ka Grandson is a decent effort to present the distinction between generations and the perils of partition too were presented with great conviction. But somewhere, the whole film lacks the depth and direction as a result it fails to strike a chord as anticipated. Its watchable with reservations and those who prefer family dramas that dwell on relationships can give it a try.
