sayontan
Joined Jul 2004
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Reviews8
sayontan's rating
Most sports biopics have a good foundation in accuracy, and then adds on a dose of drama to make the tickets sell.
In the recent past, there have been quite a few other cricket biopics - MS Dhoni, Azhar, and 83. Azhar was undiluted trash, and a deliberate attempt to cover up the wrongdoings of an admired Indian captain. But Dhoni and 83 were well-made movies, which kept the sports aspects pretty intact in terms of showing team members and the progression of matches (both movies added drama, but that had little to do with the main story).
I don't know what "Shabaash Mithu" was trying to do, but it was a great disservice to a player whose international career spanned almost 23 years (June 1999 to March 2022), and who captained India for around 18 years.
The list of inaccuracies is long, but the one that really stood out was completely omitting the fact that Mithali led India to 2 ODI World Cup finals (2005 and 2017) - this film completely eliminated one of the World Cups.
Another thing that I found extremely jarring was that the scorecards showed actual players such as Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur and Jhulan Goswami, yet these players are not portrayed by any actor in the "team" that is shown.
While Taapsee happens to be an actress whom I like, the script and story here hardly gave her anything to work with, apart from looking serious and determined. All being said, the only rating points this movie gets are due to her and Vijay Raaz.
Complete with other jingoistic aspects, this movie was a colossal waste of 156 minutes.
In the recent past, there have been quite a few other cricket biopics - MS Dhoni, Azhar, and 83. Azhar was undiluted trash, and a deliberate attempt to cover up the wrongdoings of an admired Indian captain. But Dhoni and 83 were well-made movies, which kept the sports aspects pretty intact in terms of showing team members and the progression of matches (both movies added drama, but that had little to do with the main story).
I don't know what "Shabaash Mithu" was trying to do, but it was a great disservice to a player whose international career spanned almost 23 years (June 1999 to March 2022), and who captained India for around 18 years.
The list of inaccuracies is long, but the one that really stood out was completely omitting the fact that Mithali led India to 2 ODI World Cup finals (2005 and 2017) - this film completely eliminated one of the World Cups.
Another thing that I found extremely jarring was that the scorecards showed actual players such as Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur and Jhulan Goswami, yet these players are not portrayed by any actor in the "team" that is shown.
While Taapsee happens to be an actress whom I like, the script and story here hardly gave her anything to work with, apart from looking serious and determined. All being said, the only rating points this movie gets are due to her and Vijay Raaz.
Complete with other jingoistic aspects, this movie was a colossal waste of 156 minutes.
While Start-Up is not the first K-drama I have watched, it sure is the one I have found most enjoyable and I have ended up re-watching it several times.
So many things about this series are beautiful:
1. The setting: Until I started watching K-dramas, I had no idea that South Korea is the country with the fasted internet speeds in the world (they even mention this in "Crash Landing on You"). So, it was refreshing to see a show that makes start-ups and technology the focal point.
2. The concepts: The Hackathon episode was pure gold. It demonstrated a very practical use of a core AI concept, a "Generative Adversarial Network" (or, a "GAN"), where two AI programs written for contrasting purposes compete against each other to get better. Subsequent episodes imparted very basic pearls of wisdom that often get lost in people's quests to build shiny new things (like 92.4% accuracy with a low-powered computer being much better than 93.8% on a full-featured computer).
3. The story: While many other reviewers have have voted the series down due to the way the romance turned out, it was a non-factor for me. The makers showed beautiful character progressions across the board.
All primary characters showed great character arcs - Seo Dal-Mi (Bae Suzy) from an adventurous go-getter to a mature CEO, Han Ji-Pyeong (Kim Seon-Ho) from a blunt and outspoken critic who would do anything for one particular person to a critic still delivering the same message but with nuance, Nam Do-San (Nam Joo-Hyuk) from a brilliant but timid person to someone more self-confident in his abilities to do anything for the person he loved, and Won In-Jae / Seo In-Jae (Kang Han-Na) from a brash gold-digger to someone who recognizes the true worth of people and makes the effort to reconnect with people in her life. The character progressions were enough to justify the angle the romance took.
The supporting cast too had brilliant characters and character development - Kim Hae-Sook as the grandmother, Song Seon-Mi as the mother, the other employees of the start-up, Nam Do-San's parents etc.
4. The cast: Well, I fell in love with Bae Suzy. I mean, who wouldn't!!?? This was the first time I watched a show with her, and while I cannot understand Korean, her face conveyed the entire range of her emotions beautifully. Her vocals for the OST track "My Dear Love" were moving, to say the least. I also found Kim Seon-Ho to be a fantastic actor (on par with Yon Se-Jin from CLOY), and not just a person who lands roles by looking good. I did feel Nam Joo-Hyuk was quite stiff compared to Kim Seon-Ho (and maybe that is why there is so much hate directed at the story), but the rest of the cast pretty much nailed their roles.
5. The OST: Top marks for this one. So many of the songs are so eminently hummable that I ended up adding the OST to my music library.
All in all, this show gets full marks on multiple dimensions and joins the list for some of the most interesting shows I have seen, along with Crash Landing on You, It's OK to not be OK, and Memories of the Alhambra.
So many things about this series are beautiful:
1. The setting: Until I started watching K-dramas, I had no idea that South Korea is the country with the fasted internet speeds in the world (they even mention this in "Crash Landing on You"). So, it was refreshing to see a show that makes start-ups and technology the focal point.
2. The concepts: The Hackathon episode was pure gold. It demonstrated a very practical use of a core AI concept, a "Generative Adversarial Network" (or, a "GAN"), where two AI programs written for contrasting purposes compete against each other to get better. Subsequent episodes imparted very basic pearls of wisdom that often get lost in people's quests to build shiny new things (like 92.4% accuracy with a low-powered computer being much better than 93.8% on a full-featured computer).
3. The story: While many other reviewers have have voted the series down due to the way the romance turned out, it was a non-factor for me. The makers showed beautiful character progressions across the board.
All primary characters showed great character arcs - Seo Dal-Mi (Bae Suzy) from an adventurous go-getter to a mature CEO, Han Ji-Pyeong (Kim Seon-Ho) from a blunt and outspoken critic who would do anything for one particular person to a critic still delivering the same message but with nuance, Nam Do-San (Nam Joo-Hyuk) from a brilliant but timid person to someone more self-confident in his abilities to do anything for the person he loved, and Won In-Jae / Seo In-Jae (Kang Han-Na) from a brash gold-digger to someone who recognizes the true worth of people and makes the effort to reconnect with people in her life. The character progressions were enough to justify the angle the romance took.
The supporting cast too had brilliant characters and character development - Kim Hae-Sook as the grandmother, Song Seon-Mi as the mother, the other employees of the start-up, Nam Do-San's parents etc.
4. The cast: Well, I fell in love with Bae Suzy. I mean, who wouldn't!!?? This was the first time I watched a show with her, and while I cannot understand Korean, her face conveyed the entire range of her emotions beautifully. Her vocals for the OST track "My Dear Love" were moving, to say the least. I also found Kim Seon-Ho to be a fantastic actor (on par with Yon Se-Jin from CLOY), and not just a person who lands roles by looking good. I did feel Nam Joo-Hyuk was quite stiff compared to Kim Seon-Ho (and maybe that is why there is so much hate directed at the story), but the rest of the cast pretty much nailed their roles.
5. The OST: Top marks for this one. So many of the songs are so eminently hummable that I ended up adding the OST to my music library.
All in all, this show gets full marks on multiple dimensions and joins the list for some of the most interesting shows I have seen, along with Crash Landing on You, It's OK to not be OK, and Memories of the Alhambra.
