Sitaare Zameen Par: Aamir Gives Us Another Worthy Cause

Underdog stories always appeal to the audience if made well, and Aamir Khan's presence guarantees that, assures Deepa Gahlot.

In the 2007 film, Taare Zameen Par, Aamir Khan had shone a light on dyslexia, which only the most well-informed parents or teachers were aware of. Others simply called the child struggling with learning disabilities 'duffer.'

Now, he comes out of self-imposed retirement to star in Sitaare Zameen Par, which also questions the idea of 'normal'.

The film is a faithful remake of Javier Fesser's Spanish film Campeones (2018), which was remade as Champions in Hollywood in 2023 by Bobby Farrelly. (David Marques and Fesser are given writing credits, so it is evidently an official remake.)

Aamir has not directed this one, R S Prasanna (Shubh Mangal Savdhan) has taken on the task.

The Spanish original was inspired by the Aderes basketball team in Burjassot (Valencia), made up of people with intellectual disabilities. it won 12 Spanish championships between 1999 and 2014. The film was Spain's entry for the Oscars.

The trailer is quite straightforward, giving out the important plot points. It appears to have got the comic and emotional ingredients blended well.

The protagonist is Gulshan (Aamir), who gets fired from his job as a basketball coach for punching a man on court. He gets drunk and rams into a police car.

Though community service is not a norm in the Indian legal system, the judge orders him to coach a team of intellectually challenged teens.

He is outraged and every time he refers to them as 'pagal', the judge ups the fine.

He arrives at the school for special needs children, to find a bunch of high-spirited teens, who like every other youngster their age, have a problem with authority.

Unlike regular sportspersons, they have neither the discipline nor competitive spirit to participate in tournaments, clearly because nobody showed any faith in them before, nor had the patience to work around their shortcomings.

Those who have not interacted closely with children like these cannot know that they function in their own way, and Gulshan finds out soon enough how to cope with their no-boundaries behaviour and transforms them into a team.

A girl joins up too, and teaches Gulshan the value of respecting the opponent, when, during his pep talk, he says that they will take the pants off the competing team.

There must be challenges and frustrations, which will be seen in the film, but going by the scenes and dialogue in the trailer, what the film emphasises is that 'normal' is not a catchall word, and that everybody's concept of normal can be different, as the principal (Gurpal Singh) of the school puts it.

Genelia Deshmukh makes an appearance, as the love interest, and Dolly Ahluwalia his mother, who refers to him as 'tingu' in a scene, which is Aamir making fun of himself.