'All India Rank' movie review: Growing up with Grover

A still from All India Rank

All India Rank
U/A: Comedy, Drama
Dir: Varun Grover
Cast: Bodhisattva Sharma, Samta Sudiksha, Sheeba Chaddha
Rating 3/5

At the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) coaching lecture in this film, the teacher asks students: what's common between HC Verma, author of a popular physics textbook, and Bollywood director, Mansoor Khan? The answer is both went to IIT.

The latter for an example would be as true for several of the best-known alumni from the nation's top engineering college - Arvind Kejriwal, down to content creators, TVF.

Their contribution to varied fields, from politics to entertainment, even business/administration, might outsize anything earth-shattering achieved in science/engineering, per se.

Or, maybe, that's just my personal bias talking. The teacher delivering the physics IIT lecture is a woman (the lovely Sheeba Chaddha) which, in a sense, is reversal of a stereotype.

The film opens with a song that sounds like an ode of sorts to the Nazia Hassan number, Boom boom, which in turn could've similarly inspired the Don (2006) track, Aaj ki raat.

The feel is decidedly '80s pop. All India Rank is set in the heart of the '90s, which is nostalgia-max for the times we're in. Its tributes instantly pique popular imagination. In the same way that the '60s/'70s were nostalgia for the '90s. The past is inevitably a happier mirage.

In fact, nostalgia appears to be the very purpose behind this picture - recommitting to memory warmer, simpler times, when choices were few, and so we connected more deeply to things deemed pop-culture - ads, brands, movies, TV shows, sports stars…

You patiently spot them all over this movie, ideally with a smile on your face - Swad candy, Sabatini poster, Milton water bottle, and what looked like Gold Spot in a Limca bottle.

The family in the film runs an STD booth, a term the GenZ or Gen Alpha might confuse with something to do with a sexually transmitted disease. The father in the film works as a sub-divisional engineering in the department of telecom. Another job sitting pretty in the cupboard of the past. Detailing is delicious.

What else happened in '90s India? Liberalisation of the economy, of course - opening Indians up to the world of goodies beyond borders, firstly. The flip side of this, the film argues, is that it spawned a success industry, obsessed with parents/children vying for a place in the IITs.

The gates of which promised startling ‘starting salaries' hitherto unknown to generations before; given more and more private and multinational companies in the market.

Let them eat/IIT cake, said every parent/guardian/teacher, hoping for an assured future for their kids. Only about a couple of thousand students could make it through, though. Hence, the equally gruelling sweat-shop industry centred on spoon-feeding syllabi.

All India Rank is primarily set in the town, Kota, Rajasthan: "Coaching ka Haridwar". Which is where the fine teenaged leads (Bodhisattva Sharma, Samta Sudiksha) in the film go to prepare for IIT.

TIL: Kota used to be an industrial township. Industries shut down. Engineers stayed back. They opened coaching institutes. You can tell, writer-director Varun Grover is all too familiar with these lives and surroundings.

Which actually brings me to a larger debate about content - do you necessarily write/film what you know, or figure more if there's anything still left unsaid on a theme/subject.

Since Rajkumar Hirani's 3 Idiots (2009), arguably the most successful contemporary Indian film abroad (it's got fans across China), we've sort of dealt with this tragedy of the IIT and desi engineering entrance ecosystem in multiple ways, already.

TVF's Kota Factory (2019, '21) was a fine novelty, when it debuted on YouTube (thereafter on Netflix). Biswa Kalyan Rath's under-watched series, Laakhon Mein Ek (2017, '19), was an even darker take on the same theme (on Prime Video). Alma Matters (on Netflix) is a top doc.

Likewise, big-ticket Bollywood has had its Hrithik Roshan starrer, Super 30 (2019), shining a light on the IIT coaching scene.

It's impossible to avoid a larger sense of déjà vu throughout All India Rank. Given the film itself isn't as plot-driven as centred on key characters, the longish middle sections of the movie could seem middling, if you aren't alert to every moment.

I found myself invested in the lives of the young still - handpicked to reflect that they belong - grappling with a phase in their lives, when external pressures are the most debilitating, while they're at the peak of their hormonal youth, discovering so many other things about life that leave them equally confused. Lust, included.

Even academically, you could be a topper in your school, and merely one among several toppers at a college, or coaching institute, thereafter.

I'm sure, whether IIT aspirants or not, we've all been through this rite of passage. Grover might be addressing a familiar question. But it can produce multiple answers, since this is art, not math.

As a writer (Masaan, Sacred Games), he's been an indefatigable, disciplined talent, calling dibs on multiple pursuits, from writing stand-up comedy, popular lyrics, commentary, to children's fiction.

This is his directorial debut. And evidently a sweet, sincere, personal film. I don't know how much things have changed since the '90s.

I do know my li'l cousin - just as cutely gawky, like the wonderfully cast lead-actor here (Bodhisattva) - just joined IIT (BHU), that Grover is an alumnus of. He's gone there hoping to become a stand-up comedian!