English Vinglish

English Vinglish is a 2012 Indian dramedy, directed by Gauri Shinde and starred by Sridevi. it marked the return of the actress to the big screen after a 14-year retirement.

The plot revolves around Shashi Godbole, a housewife and small entrepreneur who specializes in snacks and sweets. Despite being highly talented and competent, she is taken by granted and seen with contempt by her husband Satish and daughter Sapna since she doesn't speak nor understands English, their everyday language at school and work.

When Manu, Shashi's eldest sister, invites the family to New York for the wedding of her eldest daughter, it's decided that Shashi will go first, alone, with a month and half in advance to help Manu with the organization. Once in New York, however, Shashi feels increasingly alienated when having to do errands, culminating in a traumatic experience when trying to order lunch in a cafeteria that was exacerbated with her lack of English skills.

Determined to solve the problem, Shashi uses the money she saved from her snack business and secretly enrolls in a English academy that offers to teach the language in four weeks. The class is comprised by David Fischer, the gay instructor; Eva, a Mexican nanny; Salman Khan, a Pakistani cab driver; Yu Son, a Chinese hairstylist; Ramamurthy, a Tamil software engineer; Udumbke, a shy African-Caribbean man; and Laurent, a french chef that comforted her during the cafeteria incident. Thanks to her dedication to the classes, her charming personality, and her culinary prowess, she earns the respect and admiration of everybody in the class; in turn, her progress with the English language give her more confidence. Things get complicated when Laurent develops a crush on Shashi that he tries to express to the surprised woman, but things become truly complicated when Shashi's family arrives a week earlier than expected and the day of the final exam coincides with the one of the wedding...


 * Bilingual Dialogue
 * Casanova Wannabe: Salman, who hits in every female character in screen save maybe Eva.
 * Gratuitous English/Gratuitous French/Gratuitous Foreign Language : The film is spoken half in Hindi, half in English, with gratuitous splashes of French and Spanish courtesy of Laurent and Eva respectively.
 * Plucky Woman: Shashi. She manages to find the academy and enroll in the classes with minimal knowledge of English and New York