The Miseducation of Bindu (2020)

(On Cable TV, February 2022) I’m not a big fan of comedies where the main joke appears to be humiliating the protagonist throughout the entire running time, so there are plenty of moments in The Miseducation of Bindu in which I just felt sympathy for the character and loathing for the film. Megan Suri delivers a winning performance as the titular Bindu, a bright young woman of Indian ethnicity who, when forced to attend an American high school and being bullied for being different, immediately sets out to find a way to get out of there. As the film opens, she’s nearly done getting the credits to stop attending: the only thing stopping her is a mandatory Spanish test. She speaks the language all right (take it for granted that she’s ridiculously smarter than anyone else)—it’s the test fee that’s stopping her. Compressing most of the film’s action on a single day in high school, where she must hustle to raise the money to get out of there, is a smart decision—tarnished somewhat by the third act that spills over a few weeks later. Much of the so-called plotting is a conga line of embarrassing moments with her bullies, friends, family and colourful figures that populate her school. Writer-director Prarthana Mohan tries to walk a line between comedy and drama but doesn’t always know on which side to go, and the result is roughly three-quarter of the way there. The clever material and exuberant execution are often undermined by intensely predictable material (such as the heroine’s science-class humiliation, seen -er—coming far in advance) some weird missteps, underdeveloped characters and moments, as well as some expeditious laziness that undercuts the smarter bits of the result. I did like the final result and its feel-good conclusion, but The Miseducation of Bindu shows many signs of having been undercooked or mishandled at the script stage: another rewrite may have strengthened the structure, streamlined some bumps, expanded some telling details and provided more closure while keeping the film’s space/time unity.