Angrezi Medium Story: Champak Bansal (Irrfan) is a basic, humble community agent – one of the proprietor’s of Ghasitaram sweet shop chain – who’s having an agreeable existence with his young little girl, Tarika (Radhika Madan). Yet, Tarika has enormous dreams – of moving on from a perceived college in London. With little intends to satisfy his girl’s desire, how far will the dad go to guarantee Tarika understands her ‘videshi goals’?
Angrezi Medium Review: Firstpost
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Angrezi Medium’s opening does not bode well for what is to come. Text on a black screen at the start offers an amusing definition of the Hindi word “pita” and while translating that definition into English, mistranslates “pita” as “parent”. Ummm, “pita” is “father”.
This is a curious slip-up because despite the post-1960s Bollywood tradition of marginalising women, mothers have been deified to kingdom come by this film industry. And if a deeper meaning is sought to be conveyed here, about the protagonist (a man we have yet to meet) doubling up as Mum and Dad to his child, sorry, it does not come across. This throws up a troubling question right at the start of Angrezi Medium: would the film proceed to take the marginalisation of women to new lows? Despite its opening misfire, the answer is: actually not.
Angrezi Medium Review: NDTV
The man Irrfan Khan fleshes out with effort to spare in Homi Adajania’s Angrezi Medium has a comic flaw. Champak Bansal, Udaipur mithai shop owner and single parent, is forever in two minds. Yes or no, this or that, here or there: he is inevitably pulled in contrary directions whenever he has to make a life-altering decision.
Confusion is, therefore, the name of the game in Angrezi Medium, a Hindi Medium follow-up that does not quite make the grade. As long as the hemming and hawing is limited to the protagonist, it generates a certain amount of mirth. But when the screenplay, credited to four writers (too many cooks…?), muddles things up, which is more frequently than is good for the film, it definitely isn’t good news, no matter what medium one chooses to deliver it in.