Film Bubblegum review

Cast: Dilzad Hirale, Apoorva Arora, Sohail Lakhani, Suraj Kumar, Tanvi Azmi and Sachin Khedekar

Directed by Sanjivan Lal

Indian films on upbringing have mostly focused on issues that adults believe children deal with. Director Sanjivan Lal's 'Bubblegum' creates cinema for kids and even gets terribly close to at least one fragment from each of our childhoods.

The story is based in 80s Jamshedpur, but it wouldn't be much different if it were based out of anywhere else during that period. Our lead is a boy called Vedant (Dilzad Hirale), a goofy-looking dreamer, with little care for life, like most kids his age. Clearly, the promos tell you that he has a love interest and the movie could be based on his many attempts to charm his first love, the precious Jenny (Apoorva Arora). It is that, but luckily, also has much more to offer.

Vedant also has an elder brother, Vidur (Sohail Lakhani) who is hearing impaired and an arch enemy Ratan (Suraj Kumar) who also loves Jenny. So, we have a little Archie-Reggie-Veronica here. His refreshingly liberal parents played by Sachin Khedekar and Tanvi Azmi observe a great balance of sternness and leniency, conveyed beautifully in the line, "Humein pata hona chahiye, ki patang mein kab dheel chodni hain aur kab kaatni."

With the milieu of Jamshedpur preparing for Holi, the movie traces the many firsts in Vedant's life and how he tries to get out of every awkward situation he finds himself in. The movie explores into the many innocent fears, pleasant realisations and ridiculous delights that tickled us as children. It also presents how these fears visible into actions that seemed like the only resort at the time, without being preachy or judgmental.

Although the movie may not have a revolutionary tale, it manages to keep you interested and more outstandingly, involved.  It is also easy to relate to Vedant's frustration, sudden fits of baffling anger and anxiety which are typical traits of adolescence where better judgment is yet to prevail.

Overall, it is an above average film and worthy to watch once.