Critics’ Verdict: ‘Sachin: A Billion Dreams’ Panders to the Fans

Critics react to the Sachin Tendulkar biopic.

Film: Sachin: A Billion Dreams
Director: James Erskine
Cast: Sachin Tendulkar, Anjali Tendulkar, Sara Tendulkar, Arjun Tendulkar, Mayuresh Pem, MS Dhoni, Virender Sehwag

Excerpts from reviews of Sachin: A Billion Dreams:

What the documentary does well, however, is show just how deeply pressure and criticism weighed on Sachin. How shamefully his children were jeered at in school when his batting wasn’t upto scratch, and how headlines and editorials baying for his blood affected the man himself. We are, for better or worse, hearing Tendulkar tell his story his way, and it’s interesting to see what he chooses to talk about.We’re listening. When it comes to Sachin, everything means the world. His first bat being presented by a sister endears her to us forever, etching the moment into lore. If you’re a believer, you’ll smile, sob and love this, albeit because of the subject and not the film itself. Film, in fact, is an inadequate word. This is a pilgrimage.

Raja Sen (Ndtv.com)

Certain sections land somewhere between admiring and naggingly authorised. Erskine soft-pedals around Anjali Tendulkar’s decision to abandon her medical studies to become a full-time wife, Sachin’s apparently fraught relations with India’s ever-byzantine Board of Control for Cricket, and the pressures of delivering for fans who think nothing of torching a stadium upon an upper-order collapse. Adherents should, however, be sated by the basic combo of heavy-hitting archive and carefully placed lifestyle detail: the revelation that Tendulkar is a Dire Straits devotee cues a montage of his majestic batting – in a deft edit-suite flourish – to Sultans of Swing.

Mike McCahill (TheGuardian.com)

This is not a movie, you won’t enjoy your popcorn and samosa while watching it. It is a docu-drama and it will bring all your emotions together — you will cry, you will fly, and you will catch yourself cheering “Sachin Sachin” and wiping tears of happiness off your face. It is to the credit of director that he manages to weave political scenarios of the country with Sachin’s craft and manages to underline what the cricketer offered to the country — positivity. No wonder the audience in the theatre was whistling and cheering for Sachin, just how the country cheered for him after every time he made a century.

Komal RJ Panchal (IndianExpress.com)