Madam Chief Minister Reviews (Top Critics)

MADAM CHIEF MINISTER is the story of a girl who rises from being a nobody to the most powerful woman in Uttar Pradesh. Tara Roopram (Richa Chadha) is born in 1982 in a village in Uttar Pradesh. The same day, her father, Roopram (Mukteshwar Ohja) is killed by members of a higher caste. Tara's grandmother, who is anyway upset with her birth since she's the fourth daughter in the family, gets enraged when she learns about the demise of Roopram.

Though a disclaimer says that Madam Chief Minister is a fictional story, it bears striking resemblance to how a former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh made her mark in politics. It has many key social-economic touchpoints that more or less defines the environment of the state. But despite all the pain the protagonist goes through, rooting for her is tough.

In a chilling opening scene, writer-director Subhash Kapoor shows us how a Dalit groom's procession, ends up in a bloody shootout, just because it inconveniences a Thakur family. In the commotion that ensues, a poor Dalit man Roop Ram is killed, minutes before his wife delivers yet another girl child. This is Uttar Pradesh of 1982, where gender and caste discrimination are rampant and infanticide is a common practice.

Main Kunwari Hoon, Tezz Kataari hoon... par tumhari hoon... meet Tara (Richa Chadda) a feisty oddball who after being rejected by Indu (Akshay Oberoi) an upper cast youth leader fights patriarchy, caste oppression and rises to power in Uttar Pradesh with the help of her mentor Masterji (Saurabh Shukla) a respected senior leader/activist for the Dalits and other backward class.

In Subhash Kapoor's Madam Chief Minister, Richa Chadha plays a Dalit politician from Uttar Pradesh with short hair and a purposeful, shoulder-forward stride. Any similarity between Chadha's character Tara and that other short-haired Bahujan Samaj Party leader, who made ground-breaking strides in Dalit politics in the 1990s, is purely coincidental.

Informed political dramas are a rarity in Hindi cinema. When a film titled Madam Chief Minister comes along, one can, therefore, barely contain one's excitement. You expect a cinematic work that tackles both politics and gender and provides intelligent insights into the two themes. But this new theatrical release written and directed by Subhash Kapoor (Phas Gaye Re Obama, Jolly LLB) and starring Richa Chadha in the lead role, is a disaster. It is worse than bland. It is bunk.

Can your film portray a chief minister of UP, who is Dalit, female, short-haired, spunky, ambitious, and claim that the character does not resemble Mayawati? The lead player in Subhash Kapoor's 'Madam Chief Minister' is all of the above. Do we believe it, or faint?