I like spending my day-off lying as a couch potato, watching movies or reading books. This Wednesday I decided upon watching the recently-released Bollywood film OMG 2. I was fairly intrigued to watch how this movie deals with an issue as sensitive as sex education. Since I always find Bollywood movies a bit overdramatic, I started the movie without great expectations.
The story line of this satirical comedy-drama film revolves around a typical middle class father, Kanti Sharan Mudgal fighting for the dignity of his son. As his son is rusticated from an esteemed school for committing an 'indecent act' (pleasuring himself inside the school bathroom!), he files a case against the school as well as himself for failing his son to cope up with his adolescent sexual urges.
The man then goes on to proving his point that if the school and he as a parent had given his son a proper sex education, he would not have been confused and misguided. The court-room drama moves along, narrating the struggles the man and his family go through as the court case takes its course.
For me the strongest point of this film is its powerful writing and execution. The way it represents the subject of sex education, still considered a taboo in this part of the world, is really commendable. In a simplistic narrative style, the movie goes on to establish the significance of including sex education in the curriculum.
The film is simple yet bold, serious yet entertaining, which is definitely a rare combination. Amit Rai, both the writer and director of the movie succeeded into making the combination work. While it was a quite a daunting task, he skillfully portrayed the need of sex education in the society through the crisis of a single seemingly common, middle-class family.
Another point of strength for the movie is that the story is backed by excellent performances by the cast members. Pankaj Tripathi was brilliant in his portrayal of a father torn between typical mindset and guilt. He too alike the school blamed it all on his son at first, but then he had a spiritual intervention from a messenger of Lord Shiva, played by Akshay Kumar to finally see the flaw of the education system as well as the society.
Though Akshay Kumar had a cameo role in this film it was the most impactful one. Despite his brief appearances on screen he greatly influenced the protagonist and thus the course of the story. It was beautiful seeing the on-screen chemistry between Akshay Kumar and Pankaj Tripathi. Plus, Akshay’s hippie look in the film was quite captivating and complemented his character wonderfully.
Among others, Yami Gautam performed quite well in the role of a cunning lawyer defending the school. The interactions between Yami and Pankaj Tripathi inside the court were pretty intense while actor Pawan Malhotra, playing the judge did a great job of providing comic relief now and then. Plus everyone else in the supportive cast were also near-perfect.
While the story and acting were the strong points, the music and cinematography seemed average to me as it had failed to make a lasting impression and faded away from my mind as soon as the movie ended.
Though the main theme of the movie is sex education in school, it deals with a variety of different subjects such as bullying, social discrimination, misinformation and misguidance, availability of pornography on internet, social taboo, parenting and the gap between parents and children in our culture.
The film successfully shows how the relationship between parents and children actually is like in the Indian subcontinent. Meanwhile in case of the main theme, the film not only touches the subject of sex education, rather explains it thoroughly. It explains the necessity of knowledge about reproductive health and how any misconception or misinformation about it can be dangerous.
Another point to notice here, it’s very unusual for sequel movies to surpass the original one in Bollywood. In this film industry, whenever a movie does well in the box office, makers jump at the idea of cashing its name by making a sequel, just for the sake of it. In that sense, this film is one of those rare Bollywood movies that successfully overtook its predecessor, ‘OMG: Oh My God’ starring Akshay Kumar and Paresh Rawal that released in 2012,
Let me end on a different note though. The irony about the film is that the Indian censor board has given it an ‘A’ rating, making it an adult film which means people under the age of 18 years cannot watch it. While the film revolves around the importance of sex education for teenage people, they themselves cannot see it. This seems to be failing the very purpose the film was made for.