An overwhelming number of reviewers on IMDb (Internet Movie Database) and Google have accorded Deepika Padukone starrer film Chhapaak with the low ratings, criticising the movie as a “drag”, “below average” and “failing to do justice to the sensitive topic of acid attack victims”.
The overall IMDb score of the Chhapaak movie is 4.6 with 11,144 users so far registered their rating. Most of the users provided the movie with the minimum allowed rating of 1 star out of available 10 stars and panned the movie for being “below-expectation” and Deepika Padukone’s “soul-less” acting.
Chhapaak is a movie based on the real-life story of Laxmi Agarwal, an acid attack survivor whose character is played by Bollywood actor Deepika Padukone. Born to a middle-class family, Laxmi aspired to become a singer one day. Naeem Khan, 32, had set his eyes on then 15-year-old Laxmi and accosts her with a marriage proposal. However, even after persistent refusal, Khan continued to stalk and follow Laxmi and eventually attacked her with acid in 2005. The movie includes in details Laxmi’s harrowing story and the formidable struggles she had to endure following the acid attack and get the perpetrators behind the bars.
However, despite being such a sensitive issue with profound social importance, the movie failed miserably in dazzling the viewers, leaving them with a feeling of betrayal that reflected in the torrent of disapproving reviews it garnered.
One of the reviewers called the movie unworthy of the hype and asked others to skip it as the movie, according to the reviewer, was well below the expectations. The reviewer also says that the movie is misleading as it does not depict the actual events accurately.
Another IMDb user bluntly called it “Avoidable” stating that the movie fails in doing justice to the character, plot and the sensitivity of the topic. The user was disappointed with the screenplay of the movie, saying that the makers could have simply made a documentary instead of making a commercial movie.
Criticising the movie as “drag”, one reviewer was genuinely befuddled that a role which could have gotten Deepika an academy award was rendered “soul-less” by her underwhelming performance.
Many reviewers were overtly critical of Deepika’s poor show in the movie. One of the users censured the movie saying that the movie pertains to a serious issue and rather than going in for a commercial film, the makers should have created a documentary projecting the realistic scenario around the condition of acid attacking survivors, which may not necessarily be comforting.
Not just IMDb, the movie has got poor ratings from Google users also. The movie got 2.7 out of 5 points, based on as many as 26623 user ratings. It seems that opinion about the movie is highly polarised, as most ratings for the movie in Google are either 5 or 1, with 1 outnumbering 5 by a substantial margin.
It is important to note that Deepika Padukone had pulled off a PR stunt for her upcoming movie Chhapaak by visiting the Jawaharlal Nehru University following the attack by masked assailants. Despite her desperate attempts to market her movie, she failed to enthuse people into visiting their nearest theatres and watching the movie. The movie’s ebbing box office collections and the withering reviews it is receiving testifies that no amount of PR stunts can salvage a flop product.
