Team FC
A boring imitation of Geetha Govindam that suffers from the delusion of being meaningful. Filled with messy writing, Parasuram Petla’s film is reminiscent of Geetha Govindam and it is not a good thing.
Family Star aspires to balance sensibility with humor in its portrayal of middle-class life, a concept that the film is absolutely in love with and cannot stop romanticising. There is an attempt to lionise the middle-class-ness of our hero.
It overdoes this middle-class angle to such an extent that it comes across as downright condescending at one point and is naturally, neither funny nor relatable, as intended. It’s funny how the makers believed this middle-class protagonist would come across as relatable.
For a film that claims to celebrate the middle class, it gets unbelievably aspirational around the halfway mark. I’m not asserting that the character shouldn’t evolve or progress, but the way it happens is just so convenient that you don’t take the film or its intention seriously.
The film just goes haywire in the final 20 minutes with the introduction of a villain out of the blue. The film just hammers you with cliches and it is too much to take in.
Amidst all the artificiality and blandness, the film comes to life when Rohini Hattangadi, Govardhan’s grandmother appears on the screen. Their lovely interactions come across as some respite from the fakeness and briefly show what this film could have been. That just wasn’t enough.