The Kite (2011) - Foreign Film Friday

Number Rolled: 46

Movie Name/Year: The Kite (2011)

Tagline: None

Genre: Drama

Length: 93 minutes

Rating: NR

Production Companies: Khushi Films

Producer: Vijay Bhargava, Mark Mann, Alan McAlex, Jaideep Punjabi, Sridhar Reddy, Hesh Sarmalkar, James Townsend, Kaiser Wahab

Director: Prashant Bhargava

Writer: Prashant Bhargava, James Townsend

Actors: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Mukkund Shukla, Seema Biswas, Sugandha Garg, Aakash Maheriya, Azur, Hameed, Hamid Shaikh, Pannaben Soni

Stunt Doubles: None

Blurb from Netflix: As a million kites take to the sky during the annual festival of the Uttarayan in Ahmedabad, India, six characters’ divergent paths intersect.

Selina’s Point of View:

I did not enjoy this film.

It was disjointed and felt more like a bunch of home videos shown back-to-back than a cohesive film. I don’t mean that it was ‘found footage’ either. It just felt like relatively bad story telling.

To be honest, I do think that I’m missing some of the significant cultural aspects.

As many foreign movies as we’ve seen throughout Foreign Film Friday, this one felt the least culturally familiar to me. That means that a lot of the story likely went right over my head.

Sometimes, that just happens. To someone with a more in-depth knowledge of the Hindi culture, this might be a poignant and very watchable film. Unfortunately, I just don’t think it crosses that kind of cultural barrier.

It felt irrelevant.

Cat’s Point of View:

If this were a handwritten medium, you’d probably see some ink smears on the page from one of two things – the sprinkling of my tears as I lamented why this movie was going on so long, or drool puddles resulting from being put to sleep.

Ok so maybe I didn’t really get that far into narcolepsy, but it was hard not to nod off while watching this film. It’s rather short in comparison to other movies we’ve watched with similar origins. I just wasn’t having fun, so time was doing its best snail cosplay. I haven’t been so bored while watching something in a long time.

The premise of a family reunion during a kite festival is nifty, but this came across more like the family’s home movies of the celebration instead of a cinematic film. It was a bit all over the place. There were tiny glimpses at plot here and there but it felt like a giant free-for-all for the majority of the production.

There really isn’t much else to say. I’m just glad I won’t have to watch it again. If you’re in the mood for a Bollywood number or even something more serious in the Hindi cinema genre, we’ve reviewed far better movies in the past – perhaps give one of them a watch and skip this one.

Languages

Speech Available: Hindi

Subtitles Available: English, Arabic, Simplified Chinese, French, Spanish

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 53%

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 62%

Metascore - 67/100

Metacritic User Score – None

IMDB Score – 6.2/10

Trust the Dice: Selina’s Rating – 1/5

Trust the Dice: Cat’s Rating – 1.5/5

Trust-the-Dice’s Parental Advisory Rating: PG-13ish

Movie Trailer: