By skyforbes One criticism is that the British were portrayed as over the top cartoon villains. I find this slightly inaccurate.
For one, the female lead was a British woman called Jenny who is your typical English Rose. She’s not an over the top cartoon villain.
The only British person who could be considered an over the top cartoon villain is Catherine, the Governor’s wife. The Governor himself was portrayed as quite subdued yet still evil. For all his many faults, the only time we see him when he is not subdued is when his wife was dead. Despite being a racist oppressor, he still loved his wife so he did get a bit of depth.
Then there’s Jake at the Naatu Naatu scene. He was portrayed as your typical British racist but honestly he was quite good at the Indian dance, baring in mind it was the first time he saw and practiced it. Gives context to his arrogance while not justifying it. He outlasted every Brit. There’s some depth.
It’s not as though if we see the Indian characters slaughter innocent British women and children so the portrayal wasn’t that bad. If that happened and it was justified then that would be a problem.
There were many deaths at that Party but that’s just typical Superhero collateral damage. Think Marvel Civil War.
In general though, the British are portrayed that badly. I’m not sure how they could have improved it? Maybe Rahul or Bheem befriends a nice British man?
The dance scene was amazing but it was weird how all the British women were willing to ditch the British men for the Indian men. I agree with that criticism. It could be seen as sexist but then again the most evil character was Catherine, a woman.
I do wonder had Raju and Bheem been
women and the director a woman if the roles would have been reversed? Would the British men be the willing ones to dance with the Indian women while the British women would look on in disgust like every not like other girls story aimed at girls?
That would be historically plausible. In India, during the Company and Raj rule, British men would have affairs with Indian women until British women arrived.
There has been criticism of the British fashion being slightly out of date but were the Indian fashion accurate? Raju and Bheem never met each other in real life so they took liberties with the Indian side.
Remember this is a movie where two men kill the Governor of British India. It’s not supposed to be accurate. It’s basically a Marvel movie.
But the Hindu Nationalist context does make the portrayal of the British suspicious. Yes the British did bad things, but a core part of right wing nationalism and fascism is portraying certain groups of people as bad, even if members of the group did do bad things.
I understand criticism of the female characters. Sita wasn’t in the movie much though she did fool the officers and Jenny was your standard English Rose. There’s not many other major female characters apart from the evil Old British lady and Mali who is a damsel in distress.