ENSEMBLE CAST WASTED ON POOR SCREENPLAY
DIRECTOR Kabir Khan reunites with Bollywood superstar Salman Khan for Tubelight following their hit, Bajrangi Bhaijaan.
Sadly, Tubelight is underwhelming, and too long and tedious in places. The chemistry between Salman and young Matin Rey Tangu is a high point in a film about a slow-witted man and his quest to bring his brother home from the war front.
Kabir bases his film on the US production, Little Boy, about a diminutive 8-year-old, bullied by his peers, set on bringing back his father from the war. Here the script changes the lead character’s age and we have the 51-year-old Salman trying to pull off playing a twenty-something. It doesn’t quite work. He comes across as a cross between Rain Man and Forrest
Gump with a similar wardrobe. The town where he lives is on a picturesque hilltop high in the mountains and looks like a location straight from a 1960s Disney film, the era the film is set in.
Aside from one rabble-rouser and a few school bullies seen in early scenes, no one has a bad bone in their body.
When India goes to war with China the army comes to town hoping to find recruits. Salman’s character, Laxman, is nicknamed Tubelight by his schoolmates, because of him being dimwitted and slow on the uptake, like a flickering tube light, before it powers up. He is devastated when his younger brother Bharat, who is his carer, is recruited and has to head to the war front. He takes every opportunity to visit the local army base for news of his brother’s whereabouts.
When he goes missing in action, presumed dead, Laxman virtually wills him back to safety.
In one of two sub-plots, Laxman lives by a credo he was given by the late Mahatma Gandhi when the Indian leader visited their town: Faith can help you achieve anything. He literally believes he can move mountains.
This is after moving a bottle simply by willing it to happen, urged on by a magician performing a show in the town. In later scenes the townsfolk hail him a hero as they believe he truly has magical powers and could have been responsible for bringing the war to an end.
It’s all very nonsensical. There are many other illogical sequences. The second sub-plot, if written more strongly, could have raised the bar.
A Chinese woman and her son move to the outskirts of the town having escaped the racism between Indians and the Chinese in other parts of India. Here was an opportunity to really hit home and bring the issue of racism to the fore, but the director and his writer merely skim the surface.
The Chinese woman and her son, born in India consider themselves Indians, but the rabble-rouser sees them as an extension of the Chinese/India conflict. There were great opportunities to explore this story strand.
Serious cinema this is not, but even from a Bollywood melodrama aspect it falls short.
There is very little humour and the music is strictly average with only one stand-out song. Salman tries hard but fails in the dramatic scenes.
Merely pulling one’s face and contorting it to display angst or other feelings doesn’t quite cut it. It’s great to see the late veteran Om Puri in his last role before he died.
Salman’s brother Sohail does a credible job as his on-screen brother.
The ensemble supporting cast all do good work. Chinese actress Zhu Zhu works well within the limitations of her character but it is young Tangu who shines as the Chinese boy who befriends Laxman. Shah Rukh Khan is wasted in the insipid role of the magician. Cinematographer Aseem Mishra captures the spectacular mountainous regions of Manali and Ladakh superbly.
The production design by Sumit Basu and his Acropolis team depicts a town straight out of a fairy tale.
But the overall feeling is one of disappointment. Kabir’s films often have an interesting premise but are let down by poor writing. The one stand-out was Bajrangi Bhaijaan. Tubelight is not a patch on it. It flickers brightly in parts giving hope it will eventually burn brightly, but sadly it burns out and takes far too long to do so.