Aamir Khan's 'Sitaare Zameen Par' Doesn't Make You Feel As Much as it Hopes

Aamir Khan in a still from Sitaare Zameen Par.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube) 

Aamir Khan’s Sitaare Zameen Par has an agenda. It wants us to empathise with and understand those on the spectrum. It wants us to revisit and renegotiate our definition of the word “normal”. And that’s fine. We’re used to being messaged to and monologued at. All we ask for is that, that agenda be packaged and presented within an affecting, effective narrative coated in heart and humour.

All we want is our heartstrings tugged at. All we want is to feel.

And yet, well-intentioned as it is, Sitaare Zameen Par, from director RS Prasanna and Aamir Khan Productions, struggles to make us feel as much as it hopes.

Not only that, it drops the ball on most fronts—as a feel-good dramedy, as an underdog sports saga, as a message movie, and above all, as an Aamir Khan movie. 

Message Vs Medium

After a drunk driving accident, a judge assigns Gulshan (Aamir Khan) community service and puts him in charge of coaching a team of differently abled players. He’s at first reluctant, judgemental, and dismissive. But he gradually starts to fall for them and feel for them. He’s supposed to coach them, but eventually, they’re the ones who teach him about life and love—as we’re told repeatedly.

We, the audience, can’t be trusted to feel anything unless it is repeated and underlined—and repeated some more. 

Aamir Khan in a still from Sitaare Zameen Par.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube) 

The problem here isn’t the message, but the medium. It isn’t just that we’re used to the familiar, predictable beats of the large-hearted social message dramedy; it’s that the storytelling here isn’t even able to do that well.

Sitaare Zameen Par makes you long for Rajkumar Hirani.

Not only because this film clearly wants to take place within a warm Hirani-like fairytale world, but because even when his unapologetic agenda was abundantly clear in films like PK, Hirani never lost sight of character, emotion, and humour to ensure the medicine goes down smoothly. This is where Prasanna struggles.

What I remember of his delightful Shubh Mangal Saavdhan was its personality, its spark, and its aching sensitivity. Despite having his heart in the right place, what we get in Sitaare is generic and familiar.

Representation That Risks Othering

It goes without saying that the beating hearts of Sitaare are actors that make up the team.

A heart-winning Ashish Pendse as Sunil, Aroush Datta as Satbir, Aayush Bhansali as Lotus, Rishi Shahani as SharmaJi, GopiKrishnan K Verma as Guddu, Rishabh Jain as Raju, Vedant Sharma as Bantu, Samvit Desai as Kareem and the absolute firecracker that is Simran Mangeshkar as Golu. The issue is that they’re poorly written characters.

The cast in a still from Sitaare Zameen Par.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube) 

Each one is awarded one quirk and one line of backstory—and that’s supposed to be enough. We barely get a sense of who they are outside of their disability, and close to none of them are awarded any individual dynamics with others in the group.

In trying, and failing to humanise these figures, the intentions of Sitaare risk backfiring and othering them.

These characters have many challenges that are easily connected with— navigating jobs, family and relationships—but the narrative from Prasanna and writer Divy Nidhie Sharma isn’t interested in any of that outside of one brisk montage. There are kind, heartfelt moments here, but they get lost in a tiring, overlong narrative. 

It doesn’t help that the hit-and-miss “feel good” humour doesn’t just fail to live up to its potential. It does a poor job of navigating very tricky territory. It sincerely tries to have the neurodivergent characters in on the joke, but too often it feels like they are the butt of it. 

And make no mistake they’re not the subject of the story... they’re merely a device for Gulshan’s transformation. This is his journey.

Gulshan Isn’t a Lived-in Character, He’s a Concept

I get that he’s supposed to be a surrogate for us, and I appreciate the idea that it’s the neurotypical character who needs to grow up and get his life together and learn from them. But it’s a fine line which once again the film fumbles with, often relegating the team to the background.

The focal point here is Gulshan. His resentment, His shortness. His insecurity. His fear of being a father. His marriage. His shortcomings as a son.

Instead of having us understand and feel for the neurodivergent characters, the film seems hellbent on having us pat Gulshan on the back. Taare Zameen Par was about young Ishaan Awasthi's journey, and the delightful Ram Shankar Nikhumb merely played a key role in helping Ishaan along the way. This film is Gulshan's journey—this team he’s made to coach exist merely to help him along the way. 

The cast in a still from Sitaare Zameen Par.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube) 

And Gulshan isn’t a lived-in character, he’s a concept. He’s born the minute the film begins and fades away into existence the second the credits roll.

And he’s not the only one. There’s also Gurpal Singh as Kartar, the head of the centre for differently abled people where Gulshan is made to coach. Kartar is a strange, mystical figure who seems to appear out of thin air and who exists only to speak at Gulshan and us about the plight of the neurodivergent community. 

Genelia Deshmukh in a still from Sitaare Zameen Par.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube) 

Throw in the always delightful Genelia Deshmukh as Gulshan’s wife Sunita who’s some sort of warped male fantasy figure. After a tantrum we’re told Gulshan has walked out on her, ignored her calls for weeks, lost his job, got into fights, and engaged in drunk driving—and she doesn’t seem to hold any of this against him.

She’s just there, patiently waiting on the sidelines for him to stop being a man-child, and she’s ready to drop everything to support his every whim at a moment’s notice. You gotta love men writing female characters. 

It Treats its Audience like Children

Even the central narrative thread of the sports—you know, the actual basketball part—makes little sense. I couldn’t explain to you the nature of this tournament and who the different teams are.

More importantly, I couldn't explain to you how Gulshan’s team starts winning matches and gets good. They just do.

But again, these are all points of “logic” which shouldn’t matter in a heightened feel-good universe. But when the narrative doesn't consistently deliver on the emotion, you can’t help fixate on that logic. 

And then there’s Aamir Khan. Sitaare is a children's film because it's hell-bent on treating its audience like children, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Aamir’s performance.

He’s repeatedly talked about how it was the pitch of his performance in Laal Singh Chaddha that he believes broke that film, but none of that wisdom seems to be applied here. Every emotion Gulshan feels must be pronounced, exaggerated, and overplayed on his face. I understand that this film is looking to play to the gallery to reach the widest possible audience but this can’t be the only way. 

Aamir Khan in a still from Sitaare Zameen Par.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube) 

It’s a performance that seems to be reduced to a series of emojis. When he’s confused, he must scratch his head. When he yawns, it must be with a capital ‘Y’. It’s the all-too-familiar-Aamir bag of tricks except dialled all the way. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy's music equally fails to do little for the narrative, as does the fact that you're acutely aware that most of the film takes place on a single set.

Sitaare wants to be a large-hearted feel-good fairytale. But the thing about fairytales is, in the absence of wonder, magic and heart, they tend to be little more than fluffy, condescending, message-heavy stories spoken at us. 

Sitaare Zameen Par released in theatres on June 20.

(Suchin Mehrotra is a critic and film journalist who covers Indian cinema for a range of publications. He's also the host of The Streaming Show podcast on his own YouTube channel. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)