Googly (2019)

Arjun and Dali are a Googly couple who suffer from a stammering problem but soon their lives change after the birth of their son, Googly.

Abhimanyu Mukherjee’s third film Googly follows a similar pattern of his previous film Piya Re, except for the tragic ending. Even if it is possible to bear with the first half of the film, the prolonged melodramatic sequences in the second half don’t have the makings to evoke emotions, rather the desperate attempt to make the audience cry turns out to be futile.

The film has nothing to offer, but a linear predictable storyline. Also, the trailer gave away a lot about the film, leaving little for the audience to anticipate.

The protagonists of the film have a speech defect i.e. they stammer. The hurdles they face in their life are sometimes depicted with humour or placed against the most common issues, such as marriage and bearing a child. It is true that people with a stammer face discrimination in every sphere of life, but Mukherjee’s film somehow gives out the impression that marriage and parenthood are the gravest circumstances in life.

The problem is that the hurdles or the discriminations faced by the characters don’t get importance in the film. Neither do the characters rise above their problems. At the end of the film, the message conveyed by Mukherjee turns out to be — people with similar problems can survive any obstacle if they stand together or perhaps, people with similar disadvantages are destined to be together.

Dali (Srabanti Chatterjee) is ridiculed by her friends and is often left alone in social gatherings because of her speech defect. Her parents are adamant on getting her married. Suitors pay her a visit, only to find out that she stammers and eventually reject her. Dali then decides to not get married but she finds herself trapped again in a matchmaker’s plan.