2 Stars (out of 4)
Sitaare Zameen Par is available for rent on YouTube
Aamir Khan’s sports comedy Sitaare Zameen Par (“Stars on Earth“) fits as a spiritual successor to his 2007 educational drama Taare Zameen Par. Both films aim to teach their audience about disabilities, and both do so in a heavy-handed way that focuses too much on Khan’s character.
This time, Khan plays Gulshan Arora, an assistant coach for Delhi’s professional men’s basketball team. Head coach Paswan Ji (Deepraj Rana) doesn’t like Gulshan’s know-it-all attitude and teases him for being short. More accurately, Paswan Ji says that if Gulshan is such a basketball expert, why doesn’t he jump and touch the 10-foot-high rim. People nearby laugh, as if this isn’t a) a stupid way to judge basketball knowledge, b) a feat even some pro players can’t accomplish, and c) definitely something most 60-year-olds (like Khan) can’t do.
Gulshan punches the head coach and gets fired. Then he gets drunk and hits a police car while driving home. A judge gives Gulshan a choice: go to prison, or coach a team of special needs adults. He chooses the latter.
For his community service, Gulshan is tasked with training about a dozen players at a recreation center for adults with intellectual disabilities and neurodevelopmental conditions like Down syndrome and autism. Community center director Kartar Paaji (Gurpal Singh) tells Gulshan to act like he’s coaching a bunch of 8-year-olds.
I am not the intended audience for this film, nor is anybody residing in the United States or anywhere with an established special education system. Sitaare Zameen Par is aimed at people with very minimal understanding of disabilities. As a result, the tone and terms used to address the players is overly paternalistic. They’re talked about as children despite some being men in their 30s with jobs and girlfriends. Some of this tone is meant to demonstrate Gulshan’s own lack of understanding, but the screenplay takes it too far.
This paternalism is further demonstrated by a subplot involving Gulshan’s estranged wife, Suneeta (Genelia D’Souza in an entertaining performance). She wants kids, and Gulshan doesn’t, lest he turn out like his own absent father. Coaching the team helps allay Gulshan’s worries about parenthood, but the fact remains: he’s coaching adults, not children.
It’s not as if Sitaare Zameen Par lacks the time for nuance. Its 158-minute runtime is about 58 minutes too long as is, given how much it belabors the points it’s trying to make. Gulshan’s character development is so slow that, even in the climactic basketball game, he is surprised by how his players react to the outcome. We’ve spent two-and-a-half hours learning about these men and their feelings. What was Gulshan doing that whole time?
To be fair, it is hugely significant that the players are performed by actors with intellectual disabilities rather than neurotypical actors feigning disabilities. The players really are the best part of the film, and their charming characters are all well-acted.
That’s why the narrative focus on Gulshan’s sluggish personal growth is so underwhelming. It doesn’t help that, besides being ableist at the beginning, he’s also racist. When complaining that he can’t refer to the disabled players as “mad/crazy,” he laments that society tells him, “Don’t call a blackie ‘blackie.’ Don’t call a chinky ‘chinky.'” His subplot with his wife is silly, too, because he treats her horribly. Why are we supposed to want them to work out their issues? Suneeta deserves better.
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