Super 30 audience review: Hrithik Roshan's portrayal of Anand Kumar makes this film a one-time watch

(Every Friday, Firstpost will be running an audience review of the big release of the week, in an attempt to answer the most fundamental question: should you watch this film or not?) What is Super 30 about? After 2.5 years, finally a Hrithik Roshan movie has been released. His last outing was Kaabil back in January 2017. Director Vikas Bahl, who directed the much-acclaimed Queen, returns with Super 30. It is biographical drama starring Hrithik, Panjak Tripathi and Mrunal Thakur. Super 30 based on the life of Indian educationalist and mathematician Anand Kumar, who is best known for his Super 30 programme in Patna, Bihar. He got recognised for coaching underprivileged kids for IIT-JEE. And by 2018, 422 of Kumar’s students out of 480 had made it to IIT. [caption id=“attachment_4823821” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Hrithik Roshan in Super 30/Image from Twitter.[/caption] What works  Known for his Greek god looks and amazing dance moves, Hrithik surprisingly fit the bill, and plays the part of a man from a small town really well. His Bihari accent didn’t seem forced, even though I had my doubts when the trailer had released. The supporting cast included Pankaj Tripathi, Virendra Saxena and Aditya Srivastava, who played their parts really well. What doesn’t work The problem with Super 30 is the core narrative, that go haywire in the second half. You cannot promote a movie talking about a real life person and his struggles, but end up showing politicians and corrupt bureaucrats trying to end the character and his students with death threats. Just by mentioning before the end credits that Anand Kumar’s institute was voted/ranked the best in India or fourth in the world doesn’t do justice to what was reflected on screen. There were hardly any scenes where the students were shown cracking difficult questions/quizzes. When you’re trying to show students who crack exams like IIT-JEE, it is important to show what goes into the preparation. Fighting villains is definitely not one of the requirements for that. If I were Anand Kumar, I would’ve walked out with my popcorn and Coca Cola 15 mins after the interval. Verdict: One-time watch At the end, I genuinely wanted to watch the movie for two reasons. First, I heard and saw Anand Kumar for the first time on KBC when Mr.Bachchan invited him for a special episode and that one hour episode had a bigger impact on me than this 2 and half hour film. Secondly, one doesn’t get to see Hrithik on the big screen every few months. He doesn’t even do one movie every year now. So to see the megastar pull off a living legend’s character was important to me as a movie buff. Super 30 is a one-time watch.