Chalk n Duster- Movie Review by Shoby

Chalk n Duster- Movie Review by Shoby

2.5 Hearts out of 5

I believe art is said to be pure only when it touches your heart. You don't always need a plethora of entertainment, fun, masty & thrill to make a movie works wonders. Sometimes a nice small relateable story can prove to be a good affair, if told in a meaningful way.

Jayant Gilatar starrer Chalk n Duster which stars a bouquet of fine performers primarily Shabana Azmi, Juhi Chawla & Divya Dutta deals with a very sensitive & forgotten but a very serious issue that our societies in India & Pakistan are facing. We, the public of Pakistan & India has to deal with an issue of quality education. Our school education system is divided into Government sector & private sector institutes. Government institutes are considered not that much trustworthy when it comes to good education but private sectors have made a name for themselves in this field.

Dilemma is that these private schools have changed the dimensions by converting this noble profession into a business. Race of topping in charts and becoming number one is actually putting up a serious dent in the ethics of the society and same is evident in the school systems.

Chalk n Duster tells us the story of two school teachers Vidya (Shabana Azmi) and Jyoti (Juhi Cawla) who fight for their pride. Foreign return MBA (Aarya Babbar) who is the son of the school owner takes the charge of school as the new owner & aims to bring his school at the top spot. He replaces the veteran principal with Kamini Gupta (Divya Dutta) who is stubborn, cunning & wicked.

After becoming new principal, Ms. Gupta reshapes the school system with new structure & rules and with her tactics she indirectly force senior teachers to resign. She terminates Ms. Vidya citing the reason that she is outdated, incompetent & incapable. Ms. Vidya suffers a cardiac arrest and Ms. Jyoti helps her. Seeing this, Ms. Gupta terminates her too. Then the two senior teachers start a fight to prove the world who is right.

Although, Chalk n Duster is plagued with a major problem (slow pace), it works in pieces due to some decent performances by the supremely talented cast. Shabana Azmi, Juhi Chawla & Divya Dutta have delivered brilliant performances in their own capacity. Jackey Shroff & Rishi Kapoor are also good in their nicely written cameos.

As stated earlier film's pace is slow and therefore proceedings looks exaggerated. Screenplay is just OK however it could have been much better. Editing is poor. Baba Azmi has done some nice cinematography to show the environment of a private school. There is nothing special to talk about the musical score of the movie. Well I personally loved the word recess when it appeared in place of interval. Reminded me of my own school. 

This film is apparently made to deliver a strong message regarding honor & respect of teachers who makes us who we are and play a very important part in the success of one's career. It also tells the world that education which is considered to be a scared profession should not be made a business. And if we go only with these valid points which the film tries to make, we will definitely say that films like this still work today, after all we all live in the relevant society.