dangal movie review for exam in english

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Common sense media reviewers.

Tough father trains unwilling daughters to be champions.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Everyone has to fight for herself. Before you figh

Phogat was a wrestler when young; when his wife be

Women wrestling matches features throws, twists, g

Men ogle girls dressed for wrestling.

Adults consume alcohol.

Parents need to know that Dangal , in Hindi with English subtitles, is based on the true story of two girls from a small Indian village whose strict father insisted on training them with the goal of winning gold medals in international women's wrestling. This stirring movie, about striving for excellence and…

Positive Messages

Everyone has to fight for herself. Before you fight, you have to conquer your fear. Don't tell a tiger to fight like an elephant. Girls should do their best and try their hardest in order to help change the minds of those who believe that girls are inferior to boys.

Positive Role Models

Phogat was a wrestler when young; when his wife bears only daughters, he trains them to compete in women's wrestling at the highest level, despite their reluctance, embarrassment. Geeta and Babita come to see the value in all that their father has taught them. A jealous coach tries to eliminate the father's influence on the girls. The younger sister who admires her older sibling has wisdom to share as the elder rebels.

Violence & Scariness

Women wrestling matches features throws, twists, grips, and holds. Physical training for such matches is taxing. Someone is locked in a closet. The girls fight at school when bullied, giving the father the idea to train them to be wrestlers. A very tall and muscular wrestler challenges a smaller man to wrestle. The tall man loses. Geeta and her father wrestle fiercely.

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Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Dangal , in Hindi with English subtitles, is based on the true story of two girls from a small Indian village whose strict father insisted on training them with the goal of winning gold medals in international women's wrestling. This stirring movie, about striving for excellence and rejecting received wisdom of so-called experts, follows the girls as they unwillingly bend to their father's iron will and endure 5 a.m. workouts and humiliating haircuts. They come to appreciate how much the father's high standards and training methods reflect his respect for women. This is set in stark contrast to the fates many Indian women are relegated to: wife at 14, child-bearer, cook. Older kids, and especially girls, may be surprised to watch a movie that seems to be about an unfair dad that turns into a celebration of the strength and talents of women and girls. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Kids say (4)

Based on 1 parent review

What's the Story?

DANGAL, which means "wrestling" in Hindi, is the passion of Mahavir Singh Phogat (Aamir Khan), a talented amateur wrestler who never won gold for his country but longs to train his sons to fulfill his dream. When his wife bears daughter after daughter, he adjusts his plan, forcing his preteen girls Geeta (Fatima Sana Shaikh) and Babita (Sanya Malhotra) to train like professional athletes. He cuts their hair off and drags them to compete against boys, humiliating them. The town disapproves, but Phogat bends to no one, imposing 5 a.m. trainings and workouts with a nephew to toughen the girls up. It's not until the girls skip training to attend a wedding that their eyes are opened to the fate of most Indian village girls. The miserable bride expresses her envy over their father's attention. She points out that girls are considered burdens until they're married off at 14, when a husband they've never met before takes charge of them, gets them pregnant, and relegates them to childcare and kitchen duty for the rest of their lives. Babita and Geeta train with enthusiasm from that point on, winning so many bouts that first Geeta and then Babita both earn spots on the coveted national women's team, which boards and trains them far from home and their father's wise and watchful eye. A vain and incompetent coach tries to erase their father's training, substituting an emphasis on technique that results in losses. As the girls learn to trust their father and appreciate his respect for them, they reject the coach, revel in their own passion for wrestling, and bring pride to themselves and their country.

Is It Any Good?

At times, this is an utterly thrilling sports movie featuring some of the most compelling fictional sports competition scenes in recent memory. Director-writer Nitesh Tiwari creates an unmistakable arc for each character that defies cliché even as Dangal does in some ways adhere to well-worn story conventions. A tough father/coach imposes his will on young, lazy beginners who want to avoid both feeling different from all the other girls and the grueling training imposed on them. But the movie transcends these banalities, partly through the use of well-placed songs with lyrics specific to wrestling and training ("Wrestle, O Wrestler!"), and also through a refusal to make excuses for the father and his harsh ways, even when he finally tells the girls he's proud of them.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what it takes to be a good parent. Should parents teach children not to care what others think? How can that be a good thing? How can that be a bad thing?

The girls were humiliated when their father forced them to cut their hair in Dangal . Why do you think after growing it out in rebellion, Geeta cuts it short again? Does she realize that being different can be something to be proud of? Does she do it to acknowledge all that her father had been right about?

Do you think the athletic training the girls received will make them stronger people? What are some of the drawbacks of being treated by their father that way?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 21, 2017
• On DVD or streaming : January 3, 2019
• Cast : Aamir Khan , Fatima Sana Shaikh , Sanya Malhotra
• Director : Nitesh Tiwari
• Inclusion Information : Indian/South Asian actors, Female actors
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 161 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : February 27, 2022

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Film Review: ‘Dangal’

A Bollywood girl-power drama about a father-coach turning his daughters into star wrestlers is too much of a formula thing.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Aamir Khan , the star of “ Dangal ,” is as formidable and celebrated a movie star as India has going. Two years ago, he played the lead character in “PK,” a sci-fi comedy about an alien who visits earth and points out everything wrong with it; the film went on to become the top-grossing movie in Bollywood history. Fifteen years ago, Khan starred in “Lagaan,” the transporting colonial cricket-match musical that was the last Indian film to be nominated for an Academy Award. In “Dangal” (the title means “Wrestling”), Khan has aged nicely. He keeps his short muscular body poised, and his cropped hair sets off jutting ears, plunging eyebrows, and a serene scowl that almost never leaves his face; he looks like a jock version of Salman Rushdie. Yet within that tight-lipped mask, he finds a hundred ways to communicate emotion.

That’s more than you can say for “Dangal,” a one-trick domestic sports drama that drags on for two hours and 40 minutes. “Lagaan,” which was close to four hours, earned every minute of its running time, but “Dangal” is just a thin inspirational tale stretched out well past the point that U.S. audiences will have much patience for it.

It’s based on the true story of Mahavir Singh Phogat, an amateur wrestler who lived for the proud dream of seeing his country take home athletic “gold.” (It sounds like he’s talking about the Olympics, but he means any international competition.) Due to a lack of government sports funding, Mahavir wasn’t able to go for the gold himself (he became an office worker). So he took his two eldest daughters, Geeta and Babita, and turned them into competitive wrestlers, cutting against the grain of what Indian society wanted and expected girls to be.

In “Dangal,” is Mahavir a domineering stage father, using his kids to live out his failed dreams? No doubt. That’s why he prays to have sons. But when God blesses him with daughters, he transfers his obsession with molding a champion right onto them; as a coach, he’s both a domineering egotist and a de facto feminist. If the movie has a theme, it’s that Mahavir is a patriarchal thinker forced, by circumstance, to move into the 21st century. He’s a lot like India itself.

That means, among other things, that he’s going to treat his daughters with no mercy. When they’re teenagers, he subjects them to a grueling training regimen (worst restriction: no spicy food), and the defining moment comes when he cuts off their hair. It’s a lot like a Marine cut; as the two see it, they’ve been shorn (tearfully) of their identities, which their father will now rebuild from the ground up. There is — or could have been — a resonance to all of this. But Nitesh Tiwari, the director of “Dangal,” works strictly on the surface. The movie isn’t a musical, but it’s got a lot of those tabla-meets-EDM Bollywood dance tracks, and when one of them is laid over a training montage, the effect is less Bollywood than cookie-cutter Hollywood. It’s the equivalent of watching an American movie with the same story starring Greg Kinnear as the dad/coach and Dove Cameron and Lizzy Greene as the daughters, only with the cliché training sequence set to “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now).” “Dangal” is that kind of movie.

When the girls get older, the film switches actresses (the two younger ones, Zaira Wasim and Suhani Bhatnagar, are big-eyed urchins who barely register), and Fatima Sana Shaikh, who takes over the role of Geeta, emerges as Khan’s co-star. She has a gentle, dimpled face, but with her hair cropped she resembles a competitively coiled Kate Winslet, and there’s something touching in her devotion. Geeta is so fierce, yet is so carrying out the will of her father (which becomes her will), that she’s a revolutionary and a bowing disciple at the same time. The movie is way too vague about the essential facts of female wrestling in India. In the first half, it implies that Geeta and her sister are breaking the mold — that they’re heading into boys’ terrain, to the point that they have no choice but to wrestle boys. By the time they land at the National Sports Academy, where the coach becomes a rival to Mahavir, they’re suddenly part of a whole team of young-women wrestlers. When did that happen? You think: Good for India, but it renders the film’s journey more conventional than it had implied.

“Dangal” culminates in a championship bout at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, and Tiwari stages it well. Geeta has to face down an Australian wrestler with a raw-boned look to kill, and as much as any boxing drama, the movie makes you feel the human ferocity in both of them. To raise the stakes, Mahavir isn’t even there; a foe has literally locked him in an office. Geeta, to be true to her father’s dream, must do it on her own. There’s hardly a moment in “Dangal” that doesn’t go according to the numbers, but after 160 minutes’ worth of formula, the movie certainly hits a note of touching tribute to the way girl power is sweeping the world.

Reviewed at Magno 1, December 20, 2016, New York. MPAA Rating: Not rated. Running time: 161 MIN.

• Production: A UTV Motion Pictures release of an Aamir Khan Productions prod. Producers: Aamir Khan, Kiran Rao, Siddharth Roy Kapur. Executive producer: Alan McAlex.
• Crew: Director: Nitesh Tiwari. Screenplay: Tiwari, Shreyas Jain, Piyush Gupta, Nikhil Mehrotra. Camera (color, widescreen): Setu. Editor: Ballu Saluja.
• With: Aamir Khan, Sakshi Tanwar, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Sanya Malhotra, Zaira Wasim, Suhani Bhatnagar.

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