Goyenda Tatar movie review: Srikanta Galui’s film is undermined by convoluted script, ill-defined characters

It is never an easy task to make a good children’s movie. For one, you need to have a very good understanding of the way a child’s mind works – which, in itself, is easier said than done. Secondly, you cannot make the mistake of considering children as being any less intelligent than adults. If anything, they are far more difficult to please, and one has a very small window of opportunity to capture and then hold their attention for a period of two hours. Director Srikanta Galui’s new children’s film Goyenda Tatar fails on all counts. [caption id=“attachment_5890221” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] Goyenda Tatar promo poster. Image via Twitter[/caption] Based on a story written by veteran Bengali author of children’s literature Sasthipada Chattopadhyay, Goyenda Tatar follows a young teenage detective named Tatar, who lives in Murshidabad with his parents and younger sister. Tatar and his gang of friends are brave kids, always up for a challenge, a dare or an adventure. When one of his friends is kidnapped, Tatar and his close pals work together to solve the mystery and nab the kidnappers. Helping them in ‘cracking the case’ is a reformed dacoit named Suleiman, and there’s a talk of a mysterious golden idol that has been doing the rounds too. Also in the game is Suleiman’s old partner, who has now turned against him, and a jovial police officer who loves food, talks way too much and does very little work. There are many problems with the film, but perhaps the biggest among them is the script. It is convoluted, focuses on all the wrong parts of the story at the wrong time, takes too long to establish the central premise of the film, and never even makes an attempt to help the protagonist stand out. Several scenes are wasted on irrelevant things, and Tatar’s character is so ill-defined that you never find yourself rooting for him. If you survive till the end of the film, you will find that the kid has been shown to be too intelligent and daring for his age and has been given a bit too much to do. To be honest, he and his friends also come across as uncharacteristically overconfident, bordering on being arrogant – never a good trait to portray in a children’s film. The film does boast of some decent performances though – although they can be loud at places. Rajatava Dutta stands out as Suleiman, the dacoit who gave up a life of crime in order to raise a baby girl whose life he had saved. Now a changed man, he makes a habit of standing up to any kind of injustice, without fearing for his own life. Dutta captures the nuances of his character very well, and while he does end up hamming a bit, I enjoyed his performance a lot. The complaint I had, though, was that there was too much of him and his backstory in the film, and that it was mostly unnecessary, having no impact on the central story, which never received the attention it deserved. Kharaj Mukherjee brings in the much-needed chuckles in this boring mess with his excellent comic timing and fantastic dialogue delivery. Watch him as he arrives at the scene of the crime but loses his focus when he is served a plateful of sweet-dishes. He has so little to work with, and yet, as always, he makes the best of what is given to him. Mukherjee has always been a treat to watch, and in this film too, I sat up every time he appeared on screen. Shantilal Mukherjee and Monu Mukherjee also play their parts well, but one can easily see that they are struggling with poorly written dialogues and scenes. But the worst disappointment of all is Adhiraj Ganguly as Junior Detective Tatar. I feel bad saying this – he is just a kid after all – but he has been so grossly underutilised in the film that it is very difficult to like his performance. I wish the makers would have spent a bit more time developing a complete character arc for him. What I saw instead were a few hurriedly put together scenes, which did unpardonable disservice to the story. So much so that it ruined the entire experience of the film. Goyenda Tatar may be adept at solving mysteries and nabbing criminals, but the greatest crime committed in this film is by the writer-director himself, and even the sleuth might not have been able to figure out why and how the script was murdered.