In Doordarshan , a poor imitation of Wolfgang Becker’s German movie Good Bye Lenin! (2003), the family matriarch Darshana slips into a com...
In Doordarshan, a poor imitation of Wolfgang Becker’s German movie Good Bye Lenin! (2003), the family matriarch Darshana slips into a coma and wakes up 30 years later. Much has happened in between: her school-going son Sunil (Manu Rishi Chadha) has married his childhood sweetheart Priya (Mahie Gill), they have two children who are now teenagers, and they are on the verge of a divorce. The doctor warns Sunil that Darshana (Dolly Ahluwalia) must not undergo emotional disturbances of any kind. So Sunil sets up a charade that involves pretending to still be in school, not yet married to Priya, and certainly nowhere close to fatherhood or separation.
Doordarshan, the only television network around in 1989, when Darshana went into a coma, needs to be resurrected to ensure Darshana that nothing has changed. Sunil recruits his children and their friends, none of whom know anything about the programming on the national broadcaster, to help him carry out the deception.
The premise worked beautifully in the original German movie, in which a woman slips into unconsciousness just as the Berlin Wall is about to come down and wakes up after the reunification of East and West Germany. As her...
