Shakuntala Devi

Such a farce! In the process of showing Shakuntala Devi's prowess they got Vidya Balan to overact quite a bit. The movie should have been a different kind of drama in the league of A Beautiful Mind, but it ended being a masala drama.

Bollywood doesn't know how to make a biopic; or maybe they don't care as long as they're making money. Direction: The plotline is incoherent, seems like it is taken straight from Wikipedia. The movie just shows events happening without reasons, no story following up to the events. We rarely understand the mathematical genius that is Shakuntala Devi, because there's very little story to it. Much of it is just unnecessary melodrama centring around a mother-daughter relationship. This movie is an insult to one of the greatest India has ever produced. ACTING: Vidya Balan is at her worst, partly because of a lack of plot and tries hard to compensate for it. She's over enthusiastic invariably, grins all the time - something very different from the actual Shakuntala Devi. She's not jovial, she's creepy.

Also, why does a biopic need so many songs? What a waste of effort and purpose.

P.S. They added components of feminism to garner postive reviews.

Shakuntala Devi.Anu Menon.2020

Based on the life journey of profoundly known Human computer aka Shakuntala Devi, the film tries to fit in her 84 glorious years in 120 minutes screen time. The film stabs to touch major life milestones of her life from her genius mathematics career to conflict with her own daughter and to her dilemma in life to her flawed rapport with her husband.

But the film fails to bring out her psyche, mental vows and keeps spinning around her analogous achievements throughout. Many of her vital scenes are mere caricaturish portrayal to make it look breezy and to reflect her sense of humor with no depth in it. No doubt Balan tries hard with her accents, body language, hiatuses but still the film lacks in the clarity of thought.

Extremely confused movie. Is it about Shakuntala Devi? Her daughter? Her conflicted personal life? Feminism? God knows what. Other than Vidya Balan who is a fantastic actress anyway..... it's a low IQ movie about a high IQ person.

After a back to back disappointed Direct Digital Release from Prime Video looks like we kinda have the better one. Still, not the best!

Shakuntala Devi works only when you consider this as a pure Bollywood entertainer instead of looking it as a movie based on a real life person. The movie gets most of the things wrong, that's why the makers haven't claimed this to be a Biopic. Still, I felt they went too much with the "creative liberty"

Vidya Balan as Shakuntala Devi shines in a few moments but also wasn't that convincing, I'm not saying the performance was atrocious. Felt it was more of a "mothers & Daughters" conflict tale than the portrayal of a Mathematical genius.

Sachin-Jigar's music was okayish. Keiko's Cinematography and the color grading of the film was aesthetical and it went quite well with the layered narrative. The 127mins seems really long, especially after the first half of the movie. That's when the monotonous feel hits.

To sum up Shakuntala Devi is yet an another Bollywood Melodramatic Movie with the label of "Inspired by the true events." And definitely not a Re-Watchable worthy!