Team FC
It’s hard to make a religious satire these days. But it’s probably harder to enjoy one. You’re constantly afraid of your relationship with a film.
The film doesn’t seem to be worried about how it will be perceived. It’s unapologetically playful, direct, melodramatic, corny, cheeky and preachy.
An innocence that has all but vanished from today’s politically charged and reactionary Hindi-film landscape. It may speak to the India of 2023, but it could have been written in any of the previous decades.
The secularism is old-school, a throwback to not only the clear-eyed satires of the recent past but also the outspoken social terrains of the Seventies and Eighties.
It’s also nice that the commentary in the end is not skewed towards a side. It raps the knuckles of the public, yes, but it also conveys that democracy is the language of plurality. It’s about choice, not imposition.