Goodbye

Tragi-comedies are a very tricky genre to execute well on screen. While there have been numerous cases of success in Hollywood like "Amélie (2011)", "The Darjeeling Limited (2007)" and "Death At A Funeral (2010)", the genre is still in its nascent stage in Bollywood and India in general with only a few hits to its name, that too primarily after their OTT releases-like "Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi (2019)" and "Pagglait (2021)". So it was surprising that director Vikas Bahl, the visionary behind "Queen (2014)" and "Super 30 (2019)" chose the mainstream theatre release format for this genre-blender and it seems like this bravery was ill-conceived.

Amitabh Bachchan stars as "Harish Bhalla", the patriarch of the Bhalla household, who is just coming to terms with the sudden death of his loving wife "Gayatri", played by the effervescent Neena Gupta. Tasked with informing their busy and distant children of the tragic news, how he navigates the ensuing funeral and the idiosyncrasies of the family as they come together after a long time form the rest of the narrative. Rashmika Mandanna plays "Tara", Harish's only daughter and designated black sheep, after her consistent scorn towards his religious conservatism, made worse by her choice to go against his wishes and date a Muslim.

Despite its intriguing premise and a group of fine actors, a disjointed screenplay that moves along like a sequence of unrelated scenes without any real cohesion makes "Goodbye" a tedious watch. The director that gave us such natural comedy in "Queen" struggles to mount situations that deliver genuine humour, with most of the gags coming across as forced and contrived. Rashmika struggles with her Hindi accent as expected, this being her first Hindi original movie, but makes the best of an underwritten role, especially in the emotional sequences.

We are noboby to judge an Amitabh Bachchan performance and the veteran tries his best to salvage a meandering script. A scene where he gives a final goodbye to his beloved wife is a sure tearjerker but such sequences are few and far between in an otherwise, largely lackluster project which oscillates between drama and comedy inorganically, failing to deliver in both genres with equal aplomb. "Goodbye" is one film where I couldn't wait for the film to end and say "Goodbye" to an abysmal theatre experience. Not recommended!

What a funny and emotional film.

After a very long time, Bollywood has produced such a stunning film.

Death is the final but most important reality of life, and this film recounts the entire tale about it.

The movie masterfully depicts the feelings of the entire family when the most significant member of the family departs in the interim.

Different family members' emotional ups and downs are expertly depicted.

All of the actors gave their all in their performances, but Amitabh Sir & Meena Madam's chemistry easily outshines that of any brand-new coupling.

Rashmika Mandana does excellent acting.

After a long wait, Bollywood has finally produced a quality family film.

I adored it so.

Please watch it with your family.

First I thought I was in a wrong movie, the movie was not going anywhere but then movie picked up and how,

Amit ji was amazing "everyone needs to turn right" that dialogue took me away.

Three brothers are amazing in their respective roles.

Rashmika was not fit rest every thing was amazing.

Vikas able to create good movie.

First half was not that much impactful but second half is full of emotion .

The best part of the movie is 3 ladies "Chandigarh bablie" their role and acting is fabulous.

Sunil was fine as well

Neena ji was amazing.

Go watch the movie now with your family maa aur papa.

The film falls flat in its comic timing though the comedy should have been dark or slightly dark like most funeral comic family dramas do.. There is nothing wrong in the writing apart from certain scenes being overtly on-the-face comedy (the beginning scenes) that is obviously forced on the characters to enact. The writing is slow in the first half and the to & fro to the past and present is definitely not working. The dialogues are again very silly, neither realistic nor cinematic or maybe it's the dialogue delivery because once Sunil enters the frame the dialogues are interesting even after he leaves the frame. There are illogical scenes too (car phone speaker scene).

The casting of Rashmika Mandanna is what brings the bigger part of the film down. She can't speak hindi well. Her pronunciations are yuck. Whenever she speaks either she tries hard on concentrating on her pronunciations or on her acting because none of them works. I think its the language that is holding her back from acting. There is no free flow of emotions.

The film's best moments are by Sunil Grover's Panditji character. Not that I am a Sunil fan but the character is like the savior in the midst of bad acting. Amitabh Bachchan is as usual good but his character is written half heartedly. He has done justice to his role though.

Neena hardly has any dialogue and yet she is a ray of sunshine. The lady who plays the care taker has very little to do but her simple looks and expressions are so much better than Rashmika's acting.

In short, letting the badly written first half, Rashmika's presence & pronunciations, the film in general has a good flow and is worth a watch.

The plot was good and emotional. But if you have already watched the Bangali movie "bela seshe or bela suru" then it is not going to be a new type of movie to you. Otherwise everything is perfect and movies like this should be made to attach our family bonding. Sometimes we may not be able to understand someones influence in our life untill he/she is gone. Getting realising something late is not a bad thing but onec the person was gone you can not undo what you have done to him/her. It might be good or bad. Those things might be small one but those memories will live inside you forver in your life. In short I can say, always give importance the people who are around you.

Happy watching.