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List of Thanks Maa Reviews
Ratings:4/5 Reviewer:Nikhat Kazmi Site:TimesofIndia
What strikes you at the onset is the authenticity of the film. Having used a sterling cast of kids literally drawn from the underbelly of Mumbai, the film anchors their story too in the grime and dust of the megapolis that seems to be brimming over with jagged and broken souls. Watch out for the kids. They leave you spellbound with their guttural, gutsy act. Surprisingly, and thankfully, the Censor Board has displayed a sense of maturity too by letting them speak in hardcore street lingo (read abusive). The film, ostensibly inspired by Tsotsi, Gavin Hood's film that won the Oscar, does get a bit long-winded in the second half and the climax might seem schmaltzy, but these are forgivable in view of the sledgehammer impact of the film. It fills you with a yearning to do something, anything....Visit Site for More
Ratings:3.5/5 Reviewer:Taran Adarsh Site:BollywoodHungama
Debutante director Irfan Kamal's THANKS MAA is not a no-brainer Bollywood film. It is gritty, courageous, realistic and hits you like a ton of bricks!.SALAAM BOMBAY, TRAFFIC SIGNAL, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and now THANKS MAA. The lives of the under-privileged street kids continue to attract storytellers across the globe. But THANKS MAA is different because it tells the journey of a street kid who goes on a mission to reunite an abandoned kid with his mother. On the whole, THANKS MAA is truly original, innovative and pioneering cinema. The film has won several awards and adulation across the globe and deserves every bit of it. This is one meaningful film you can't afford to miss!Visit Site for More
Ratings:3.5/5 Reviewer:Gaurav Malani Site:Indiatimes
Never since Salaam Bombay or Slumdog Millionaire have the street kids from Mumbai slums been portrayed more realistically and rivetingly in a feature film. All thanks to this maa of meaningful cinema. The film works largely for the amount of authenticity that director Irfan Kamal imparts to every frame of the film. Right from casting actual slum kids to training them through extensive workshops, the film boasts of undisputed credibility throughout its treatment.Visit Site for More
Thanks to heartening films like these, one never loses faith and hope from Hindi cinema. For a new perspective on the mean city and meaningful cinema, Thanks Maa is strongly recommended!
Ratings:3/5 Reviewer:Shubhra Gupta Site:IndianExpress
Thanks, Maa’ is about a bunch of spunky street kids in Mumbai, and the gigantic odds they have to wrestle with just to exist. The biggest strength of Kamal’s hard-hitting debut film is its children and their incredibly life-like performance. All of them, except Patel, were selected from the slums, and it is evident that they are not really acting for the camera, even though their language seems more filled with invective than it needs to.Thanks Maa’, dedicated to abandoned babies in the most tragic circumstances, make any concessions to those of us who live in sanitized environments. This is a film hard to watch, but it is a film that needs to be watched. Pity it’s come into theatres unpublicized.Visit Site for More
Ratings:2/5 Reviewer:Mayank Shekhar Site:HindustanTimes
Mumbai’s underbelly, or its gritty innards, is up for public display. It is anyway as in-your-face as it gets for anyone who’s been to the city. It’s just ironic that the place that apparently produces most number of films in the world, rarely reveals itself through its own films.Visit Site for More
Danny Boyle, a rank outsider, could visually capture Bombay, err, Mumbai’s beats better than all local filmmakers put together. Kamal takes a decent shot at it as well.His camera pans across dumpsters, squatters, filth and margins that lend the high-rise Mumbai its uniquely mucky colour. The views are stunningly raw and real. They’re also at the same time dull and belaboured.While Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) wished to entertain, Kamal largely intends to enlighten. Somewhere in that obsession with the underbelly — paedophilia, incest, transgenders, BDSM, genitalia, prostitution — you can sense a filmmaker’s forced efforts to provoke.
Ratings:3.5/5 Reviewer:Aniruddha Guha Site:DNAIndia
Debutante director Irfan Kamal’s Thanks Maa is gritty, courageous, realistic and hits you like a ton of bricks. It’s the journey of a street kid on a mission to reunite an abandoned kid with his mother.Thanks Maa has several poignant moments and most of them keep you on the edge. The climax is simply outstanding.Kamal makes a solid impact as a first-time director. The camera (Ajayan Vincent) follows the protagonist like a shadow. Thanks Maa has sparkling performances by every member of the cast.On the whole, it’s truly original, innovative and pioneering cinema.Visit Site for More
Ratings:4/5 Reviewer:Subhash K Jha Site:IBoss
Strongly reminiscent of Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay and far more resonantly representative of Mumbai’s slum kids than Slumdog Millionaire, Thanks Maa is a journey into lives that were born into despair.The young hero, heroic in the truest most basic sense of the word, and his shock and dismay when he finally finds the baby’s mother are so palpable they reverberate in our hearts long after the film is over.The film has its flaws , the most glaring being the constant struggle to keep the homeless children’s story credibly contoured on the bustling streets.The jagged edges do not undermine the film’s unique and thoroughly unorthodox blend of realism and social message . While the veterans pitch in brave cameos that take the narrative forward to its heartbreaking conclusion, it’s the child actors who proudly occupy centre-stage.All of them are so in-character you wonder which came first, the slums or the camera!.Thanks, Irfan Kamal.Visit Site for More
