Sincere, but fails to make the grade

Chal Chalein 
Cast: Mithun Chakraborthy, Rati Agnihotri, Kanwaljeet, Pratham, Tanvi, Priyesh
Director: Ujjwal Singh
Rating: * *1/2

An extremely relevant and burning subject — parental pressure on children regarding their education — is tackled with sincerity, but without finesse. The question posed is: When children are in pain they turn to their parents, but when parents are the cause of pain, where do they go?

Set in Allahabad, a group of Std 11 students that calls itself the ‘Dashing Lads’ decides the gang needs a girl member, so they get one (which has no relevance to the rest of the film). Each child in this group represents some form of parental pressure or contemporary issue — admission to IIT, engineering or medicine; reservations; living out the unfulfilled dreams of parents, etc.

When one child commits suicide, the children lodge a court case against the father and hope to send a message that parents need to be sensitive and let children be children.
Lawyer Sanjay (Mithun) champions the case of the children. Some preaching creeps into these scenes and the stand of the filmmakers is tilted towards one side. There is too much effort into making this a Hindi movie even though there was no need for lip-sync songs. After a testing first half, which ends dramatically and the proceedings temporarily retain tempo post-interval, the handling of the court scenes is so unexciting. Though there was potential, Chal Chalein fails to make the grade.