Chhalaang

Hansal Mehta's 2020 Indian film follows Montu, a physical education teacher at a school in northern India, forced out of treating the job as a formality and into actually teaching. His rivalry with a newly arrived teacher turns into a competition among the students. The question behind the film is serious: why physical education is a subject nobody takes seriously, and what that says about what a school values. But the story ties this to a competition template and makes the outcome plain from the start. Rajkummar Rao plays a lazy and self-satisfied man without making him unlikeable. The film's weakness is constructing its woman character only as the cause of the rivalry. Who it's for: viewers who like Indian sports comedy and school stories. Who it's not for: anyone wanting an unpredictable narrative, or troubled by how thin the romantic line stays.