A poor young man who loves rap meets a rapper he looks up to. His new mentor believes that he has talent beyond the ordinary, but he needs to build up his confidence and dare to fail. Can this journey take him and his family away from the slum?
Gully Boy is very similar to 8 Mile where we found Eminem in the lead role. It’s about a young man who lives with his family, and they try to make ends meet. The protagonist is tired of being poor and being looked down upon. He meets a rapper who thinks the protagonist has great potential as a rapper. But first, he has to go through the fire, and the question is whether he has the psyche for it.
I liked Gully Boy, but I found some problems with the movie. The biggest problem I felt was that the actor who’s playing the protagonist is too old for this role. He looks like a middle-aged man, and I couldn’t quite take this character seriously when he looks so old. The actor was born in 1985, and he is too old to play a role like this in my eyes. Move over, grandpa!
My mother says I’m not her husband. I look like shit, and I’m in the middle of my 20s. I live in a dump, and I can not sing. So please, someone, can you just shoot me!
I’ve been waiting for my chance for so long, it makes no sense. I am older than I look, and my girlfriend beats me up. I’m so tired of this shit, and people laughing at my expense. So someone, please, shoot me! Oh, please, shoot me!
Then we have the rap battles that didn’t work. It’s possibly the Indian language that made me not feel any of the words being said. In my ears, it got fussy, and everything sounded the same. I didn’t feel the rhythm, and the tone mostly sounded the same.
But the ordinary rap music itself is catchy. And I never noticed that the Indian language was a weakness, as I felt during the rap battles. It’s catchy, and the rhythm and lyrics are good.
The actors are brilliant, especially Alia Bhatt who plays the protagonist’s angry girlfriend is outstanding and crazy in the head. She’s so jealous and angry. I was just waiting for her to kill someone. What a wonderful character!
Gully Boy doesn’t offer a fresh story that we haven’t seen before. The protagonist has a father who is stern and angry. His mother is more supportive, and he has friends from different classes in society. One is a criminal, while another is wealthy.
Then we have his great love in life, who’s furious and aggressive. She has a mother from hell and a father who is a coward when his wife takes command. The jealous girlfriend has decided that it will be her and him. But the mother and father constantly try to find her a husband, a so-called arranged marriage. It’s the usual nonsense that doesn’t belong in a civilized society. But I’m no longer provoked by it when I watch movies from other countries. It makes me laugh. But it’s starting to become a big cliche in movies from some countries.
Although the protagonist looks like a middle-aged man, you hope that he will succeed. Because he seems like a decent man trying to survive and climb out of the mud. There are some things here that are a bit confusing when he gets mad at one of his friends who is doing illegal things. This felt a little cheap. The people behind the movie force us to believe that he’s a man of big morals and principles. But he does things that are completely contradictory in a small phase of his life when he needs money.
Gully Boy has its weaknesses, but it’s an entertaining movie that has nothing new to tell. But it has a lot of charm, and I love the angry girlfriend of the protagonist.