‘Helicopter Eela’ Movie Review: Take your mother out to watch this heartwarming drama

Directed by: Pradeep Sarkar
Produced by: Ajay Devgn FFilms, PEN India Limited
Cast: Kajol, Riddhi Sen, Tota Roy Chowdhury, Neha Dhupia
Duration: 2 hour 15 minutes
Bollywood Bubble Rating: 3.5/5

In their effort to make sure that their child does not face any difficulty, mothers devote their entire lives and forget to care about themselves. With this movie, director Pradeep Sarkar attempts to ignite that ‘chase your dreams’ spark in mothers. After all, space is important in any relationship for it to flourish and the mother-son relationship is no different.

The movie starts on an unusual note. Eela (Kajol) decides to attend her son Vivaan’s (Riddhi Sen) college but not as his teacher (which is what Vivaan’s friends assume). Instead, she becomes his classmate. After establishing this premise, the story goes into a flashback mode where Eela is an aspiring singer. She has a picture perfect life with her boyfriend Arun (Tota Roy Chowdhury), and her dreams come true when she gets to sing a remix version of ‘Ruk Ruk Ruk’. She marries Arun, and they have a son. Unfortunately, due to a superstition, Arun decides to leave his family after transferring all his belongings to Eela.

Eela raises up Vivaan with a lot of care (every mother will relate to these scenes), and even ends up gatecrashing his school picnic. Her entire life revolves around him. While Vivaan enjoys this attention as a toddler, he grows sick and tired of it when he grows older. He hates the fact that his mother is always spying on him and as a result, he indulges in numerous fights with her. Still, Eela loves Vivaan to the moon, and Vivaan loves his mother too.

If you take out the unconventional premise, the scenes, the situations, the arguments and the dialogues are something very similar to what we have experienced with our mothers too. Performance wise, Kajol makes a roaring comeback and she nails her role. From a happy go lucky aspiring singer to an insecure parent, Kajol’s role is well etched out and performed with a lot of finesse. Riddhi Sen too holds his own, and despite his unconventional looks, charms the audience with his boy next door mannerisms. Anu Malik, Mahesh Bhatt and Amitabh Bachchan make excellent special appearances.

If we had to point something negative, it is that Arun’s character makes a few bizarre decisions. There are some scenes involving him that beat conventional logic, but then, he does not have a lot of screen time so it’s bearable. Neha Dhupia too doesn’t have much to do. The climax is a little filmy, but we’ve all loved such climaxes as children and teenagers.

Final verdict:

If it’s been a while since you took out your mother for a movie, then you should definitely watch this with her. If you know a rebellious teenager, you could recommend this movie to them too.

Watch the trailer here: