Why Parineeti’s ‘The Girl on the Train’ Fails to Work as a Remake

The movie tries too hard to not copy the original and in doing that fails to become a wholesome film.

(Alert: Spoilers Ahead)

Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train is one of the best psychological thrillers to be penned and when there's a movie made based on the novel, there's bound to be some comparisons. And when it's remade in another language, there's so much more that it has to live up to, case in point being Parineeti Chopra-starrer The Girl on the Train, which just dropped on Netflix.

This film is so Indian that even an Indian Bollywood junkie like me, who has grown up watching all the melodrama over so many years, couldn't take it. Parineeti's The Girl on the Train does everything possible to erase the interesting plot created by the book and the nuance which the Hollywood version of the film had.

Murdering an Interesting Plot

If you ask me, it wasn't Nusrat John (Aditi Rao Hydari's character) who was murdered in the film. It was a brutal murder of the plot that revolves around the women in the book. Now, I understand that the makers wanted to adapt the book for the Indian taste buds, but what we see is a version of the book that seems to have muddled too many stories into one.

The book and the Hollywood film is the story of a woman suffering from amnesia and alcoholism who starts to admire a stranger she sees from the train every day. She gets fixated on her to the extent that when she sees her with a man other than her husband, she feels cheated. She gets framed for this stranger’s murder and the plot then follows her trying to connect the dots. I am not a fan of how the English film was made, but the climax is one that hooks the audience.

Now, while the Indian version tries hard to cling to the bare skeleton of the plot, there are storylines added to the narrative that just make it confusing and unnecessary. Parineeti's character (Mira Kapoor) is a lawyer who fights and wins a case against a criminal whose daughter believes he was wrongly convicted and in turn tries to frame Mira for a murder. What's more Bollywood than this?

Emily Blunt's version came out as a story of women standing for each other and vindicating themselves whereas this is a masala, tadka version that concludes in a catfight. The Hindi version tries too hard to not copy the original but keeps failing to make sense as a wholesome film because of it.

A Psychological Thriller that 'Explains' Everything

It appears as if Ribhu Dasgupta, the director of the Hindi version, has remade the desi The Girl on the Train for... children. Why else would the narrative try to explain everything. If the protagonist is an alcoholic, she has to roam around with a hip flask all the time and stumble around.

Emily Blunt who plays Rachel in the English version is also shown as an alcoholic and suffers from amnesia but the makers of that film left it to the sensibilities of those watching to conclude that, and didn't have to hammer home the message in every scene like the Hindi version does.

Okay yes, Blunt is seen swaying too, but Parineeti's character sways in a way that I can't help but think about Veeru standing atop the tank saying, "Chakki pees-ing." Get the point? And you can make a good drinking game out of this movie every time the word amnesia comes up.

A Predictable Twist and End 

As I mentioned earlier, Parineeti's The Girl on the Train tries too hard to not be a copy of the original and Dasgupta has taken the liberty to alter the end completely. But I wish he had done it with a little more nuance and in a less obvious manner. Anyone who has watched the trailer will question why Kirti Kulhari's character wears a turban and when you see just ONE other character wear one, the Sherlock in you awakens.

What's the Point of Being in London?

All characters in Dasguta's The Girl on the Train are Indians based in London and its outreaches. And trust me, they don't seem to realise when there's someone from a different ethnicity around them. There's a scene where Mira Kapoor (Parineeti Chopra) goes to a support group and she's talking to people of mixed ethnicities in...Hindi.

Not just that, there are times when you wonder if Mira is a lawyer or a poet. A friend of Mira tells her, "Facebook aur ex-wives do not make good friends," I am still thinking about what this means. Just as I am thinking about what, "Main usse kabhi nahi bata payi, woh main nahi thi, woh mera wound tha," means. If you can, please comment and help.