SunnyHello Nice effects though.

GazerRise Fantastic!

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Syl This why movies are made in the first place. Based on the novel of the same name, a young Indian couple moves to America where they have a family including a son named Gogol and his sister Sonia. Gogol is perfectly played by Kal Penn. He gives a heart wrenching performance as the adult son torn between family and America. Everybody in this film gives a hundred percent. There are many enjoyable scenes. Gogol comes to terms with his own namesake. The filming was done between New York City and Calcutta, India. This film has rich developed characters, humor, warmth, and love. I nearly cried but didn't. It takes a lot to get me to cry but I was close.

ryanzellers2000 Throughout the novel Gogol's life is explained in depth and through time. But in the movie time is not as evident and for example when Gogol in the novel finds out his wife is cheating on him there is a huge build up, starting with Moshumi getting frustrated with Gogol constantly and Gogol being completely in the dark about Moshumi's unhappiness. Moshumi finds a letter from an old flame that she ends up meeting and she becomes unlawful to her husband. Eventually Gogol finds out. But in the movie there is no build up there is old flame he just approaches her on the subject one day in the airport and they split apart. After the divorce almost a year later they show Ashima leaving their house permanently. But there is no apparent time difference it makes you believe that Gogol isn't even divorced by the time his mother moves back to India.

Anurag Wankhede The NamesakeI saw this movie today. Didn't read the novel though but was able to connect I guess .It was a nice journey with Ashima,Ashoke,Gogol,Maxy,Ms Muzumdar,Mr Ghosh. Mira Nair again did a awesome job with the direction. The cinematography was commendable. The Howrah Railway station really reminds me of my commuting between Kharagpur and Kolkata. And the Howrah Bridge was revived from time to time, thus establishing the Indian connection. But the character that impressed me most is surely Ashima. She is perfect portrayal of Bengali woman, who is shy yet confident, childish yet mature. Tabu really did justice to Ashima. And Ashoke, his character was crafted very intricately. And then comes Gogol. His part, a teenage boy looking for way out and thus getting carried away and then his way back, Its Awesome.

johnnyboyz The Namesake reminded me of a really involving Chinese film released somewhere around the middle of the last decade; that of Yang Zhang's Sunflower, a film that balanced a family's plight over three-or-so decades of Chinese living as husbands and wives and mothers and sons to the central characters each interlocked across the good times; bad times; political times and times wherein natural disasters would strike and affect everyone. Here, Mira Nair's film, The Namesake, is a neat little drama additionally rearing off down similar routes of the expansive and of the all-embracing, specifically in its telling of the exploits of different generations of family members belonging to the same household as they strive to get by. In addition to this admirable approach, it will strike you as being thematically similar to Sarah Gavron's 2007 piece Brick Lane – a film released slightly later than The Namesake, but a film covering those of a Central Asian descent shifting to the Western world and getting caught up in the cultural clash-plus-traumas which appear to come with doing such a thing.At the centre of the piece is this idea based on identity and whom one is on top of where one belongs; something epitomised by a character who eventually becomes more prominent once he's grown up and into an adult. He dislikes his Christian name, a name his father gave him out of the fact it is the same as his father's favourite author, who was Russian – the boy adamant that he'll change it when he's finally able to. In a film about inter-racial relationships and cross continental living, as well as differing nationalities brewing up inside of a metaphorical pressure cooker, this idea of sticking to what you are or holding on to what you were given, encapsulated in this younger character and his wrestling with his own name, neatly epitomises Nair's hypothesis of the challenges with keeping true to where one came from, although at the same time balancing what a newfound locale and its culture come to expect of you.The film is no particular person's story, more-so it is an instance in which the director has gone on to try and depict an entire family through two generations. Credit is due to Nair, who opts for a brave and grandiose approach to a story that might have been told simpler and not as well. We start with Bengali natives Ashoke Ganguli (Khan), and his bride-to be Ashima (Tabu); two people beginning in a poor but functioning locale in the late 1970s surrounded by outspoken locals and a train network which is, judging by the opening scene, a little less than particularly sturdy. Ashima and her family's money situation is not good; the coming into contact with Ashoke leading to their joining of one another in matrimony; their immigration to America the end result as Ashima escapes poverty and the humiliation of only being able to enjoy fleeting exposures to "Made in U.S.A." produce back in India, as opposed to being in amongst the core of such things now. Initially, the film's association with this woman drives proceedings; her dwelling in a place as different as New York is to India seeing her accidentally hot-wash her husband's jumper, whilst longing gazes outwards at the world from her dwelling's windows, as icicles hang from rafters and snow lies on the ground, alludes to the gulf in difference in regards to daily grind and climate.The film covers their rise through life as successes of varying ilks befall them, no less the births of Sonia (Sahira Nair) and Gogol (Penn); Gogol being that aforementioned character whose name it is syncs up with his father's favourite Russian writer. With Gogol's ascent into young adulthood comes the film's shift of principal focus from his mother, to him; the film shooting his arrival to this stage in his life with warm and welcoming tones seeing freshly mown lawns dotted around the estate within which they're based, as well as kids playing in the street, thus reiterating a sense of unity. One man is trying to fix his car in the vicinity - this is very much the sort of place in which broken items get mended rather than left out to rust and clutter the place up. In this regard, Nair rejects harder and more demeaning depictions of New York City and life inside of it; The Namesake a film persistently shooting its location as the warm and welcoming haven Nair takes it upon herself to construct it as, as if the place is constantly seen as this newfound Utopia the Ganguli's built their lives and that nothing could ever blot it. The film is a touching character study of people not native to a nation attempting to find solace with it as well as themselves; a film depicting such things with the tensions that brew up out of close-knit family set-ups making for the sort of feature length drama about people travelling great distances for a great deal of the time, in body as well as in mind.