Director Ujjwal Singh's maiden venture "Chal Chalein' is full of right intentions and is very topical but sadly fails to create any kind of impact as it has been quite amateurishly handled. The theatrics that the film indulges in, in the second half, rob the film of its effectiveness. The film's subject is indeed heartening, in times like today, where children are indeed victims of parental pressure. But it is hardly as black and white as one would like to believe it. The director seems to take the easy way out by outing everyone on the dock and indulging in much tedious sermonising. One is looking for solutions or at least a much more mature understanding of the problem.
In the first half of the movie, the director lays out his plot quite well. The story is set in the town of Allahabad where the film focuses on a bunch of youngsters studying in Class XI, who are all subject to parental tyranny where studies are concerned, They are made to study subjects they are not interested in, forced to study for long hours and punished if they don't manage to get high marks. One of the boys wants to be a painter but is forced to study science, while another wants to be a writer but his father has other aspirations for him. One of the boys, Navneet commits suicide after he fails to achieve good marks in his exams. The youngsters are in a state of shock but then rally themselves to fight for their friend. They manage to engage a lawyer, played by Mithun Chakraborty, who buys into their argument that the boy's father, played by Kanwaljeet, is responsible for his death and should be tried as a murderer. Following the example of Navneet's friends, other children too start filing cases against their parents, thereby setting off a movement of sorts. The case catches the attention of the Prime Minister of the country, who orders judicial probe into the entire matter. Then, begins the courtroom drama, with Mithunda fighting the cause of the children against a ruthless system. Ultimately, sanity reigns and everybody is enlightened.
The biggest problem with this film is the wishful thinking by the director. His immature handling of the film and its subject matter reduces this serious subject to something very trivial. The director could have served the cause so much better if he had not resorted to the typical filmi courtroom drama cliché to resolve matters of such gravity. Nothing is so simple and so black and white. It is in fact, quite a juvenile view of the world to imagine that people would buy into this theory. We are still living in a country where justice is more likely to be delayed, and by logical conclusion, denied. Also laws are not enough to bring about a change in people and their minds. It is a process and a journey.
The film moves at a very dreary pace and the second half literally drags. It gets repetitive and loses it edge. Of the cast, the only actor who stands out is Mithun as the lawyer. The other actors, Rati Agnihotri, Mukesh Khanna, Kanwaljeet Singh, Shilpa Shukla and Anup Soni are just about adequate. There is little that the actors can do with the poorly written roles that have been given to them. The bunch of kids enacts their parts well.
Despite all of Ujjwal Singh's noble intentions, his treatment of the film suffers because he fails to courageously go ahead and think of a more creative solution to the problem. It is the creative laziness which lets the film down. "Chal Chalein' had the potential to be so much better as unlike most Hindi films, it had a new story to tell.
