Laal Singh Chaddha is an Indian remake of Forrest Gump… an official “it’s in the credits” remake with a wall of legalese before the movie even begins (serious pause required to read). This film played in my local (US) theater and I didn’t jump at it since I wanted to rewatch the American original first (which I did yesterday). Both are available on Netflix.

I was fascinated at the idea of this movie. Forrest Gump is so steeped in American history so it makes sense to adapt to another country’s history and culture. Keep the basic structure and change the timeline and historical and cultural touchstones. Makes sense to me since I’m the kind of guy who loves analyzing adaptations and alternate edits of films.

Watching this was a curious intellectual exercise. Not only am I studying the changes made (and the scenes they reproduced faithfully) but also admiring the political/historical changes themselves. Mainly because I don’t understand them and it was fun linking what I was seeing to similar events in gump. Some things went over my head and that’s perfectly ok… it was an interesting cultural exchange.

That said, the film trades less in skipping through Indian history compared to the (borderline gimmicky) American original. There’s more of a focus on the cultural strife within India… where Laal is a Sikh during a time of Hindu vs. Sikh violence (I had to google what was going on) which isn’t the case with Forrest Gump.

Not knowing the language for the sub and not sure if the dub was getting the right inflections, it was hard to tell how mentally slow the character really was. Instead, both in the dub and the sub, the actor uses a lot of vocal tics and humms… which actually got kind of annoying. I don’t know if this actor is huge in India, but, to me, he doesn’t have the cultural good guy-ness of Mr. Hanks and that lessens the impact of the film.

This is a good film and I imagine a great one for Indian film-goers who better understand the cultural references. It makes the best argument for a remake since the original is practically built with the idea in mind. I liked it and I liked its heart even though the lead actor’s mannerisms could be a little annoying.

Score: 83