Its been again a long time since my last post. Was genuinely busy with studies for my final MBBS exams. Anyways, I was going through my blog one day when I noticed I had already posted 49 posts and next one was to be my 50th one. Here it comes, my 50th post in a time of 20 months (of course, not a good speed but is OK with me presently). This is about the new release I recently saw............PAA..
Paa, the latest release in bollywood is a much promoted and and as much praised movie. Having seen promos of the movie so many times on the TV with a large-headed, wrinkled, old-looking, young boy dancing his favourite monkey dance with everybody else had created much interest inside me as to what and how the movie is actually like. It was already known to us that this boy was suffering from an extremely rare genetic disorder of premature accelerated aging called Progeria. This was sufficient in itself for anybody to make an idea that the film was going to focus on the gloomy life of such a challenged child (maybe something like Taare Zameen Par did for dyslexia) but let me clear at this very opportunity that the movie was nothing like that. What I had thought of it to be like, it wasn't. Anyways...
The movie is directed by ad-maker R Balki, who comes with this straight after Cheeni-Kum. The two movies are not similar in any way yet they have some similarities, the biggest one being the witty humour of the two movies. Paa stars Abhishek Bachchan, Vidya Balan, Arundhati Nag, Paresh Rawal and introduces Amitabh Bachchan (as given in opening credits). The movie starts with the name AB Corp Ltd, a quite surprising name to see indeed. Already knowing Abhishek and Amitabh are in the movie and the name of ABCL being associated with it, one very innocently think why Jaya and Aishwarya are not in it and in comes Mrs. Jaya Bachchan with her ever smiling, ever fresh face reading out the opening credits; of course a fresh idea of sorts but fails to create much magic for someone like me and for many others it was like why really.
The movie is about a child (Amitabh) who is witty, is intelligent, lives with his unwed mother (Vidya Balan), and in the end brings his separated (well before his birth) parents (Abhishek and Vidya) together. The same age-old saga in the form of both of them pursuing their studies at the Cambridge when they come together, have an affair, she becomes pregnant, he refuses to marry for his upcoming career and she decides to give birth to the child. They both are separated for 14 long years when he somehow meets his son. These two don't know about their relationship, become friends and ultimately the ailing child brings his parents together in form of his last wish. Well, this is all about the plot of the movie; nothing special, nothing new in it.
Anything else in the movie from this looked merely as a fill up to complete the timeline specified for a normal family drama in bollywood and was nothing but crap or shit! Abhishek plays a new-age politician/MP who is made to make one think of someone like Rahul Gandhi with a bright vision of future India, who move from house to house and meets common people, sits with them, talks to them and works to cure all their problems. For a film that is based on politics, his is a great protagonist role but I wonder what a character like him is doing in this very film. I think this part of his character that is a politician's, was stretched too far fo comfort. Moreover, he was too good to be a politician in India. He looked more like Mr. India or Superman, the messiah of sufferers or something like that. Some parts of the film like Abhishek's fight against the mediaperson was completely wasteful and indigestible.
The character of Auro, the progeriac child (Amitabh) with his great sense of humour, his innocence, childish yet mature activities was the real entertainer. It won the hearts of many and man! what did Big B do with this character. Despite being his fan, I had not expected this sort of performance from him. For me, this very performance was at the top with his performances in films like Sholay, Deewar or Zanjeer. With this, I think, he adds one more dimension to his already multi-dimensional career. One of the most illustrious careers in world cinema, I think, gets completed with this very role. In fact, it was this character and his performance that made me complete the movie otherwise I would have gone out of the theatre much before the end.
Vidya Balan as Auro's mom has looked beautiful and so has she performed. The best part for me was her look, where she looked gorgeous as the lover at Cambridge, she was mature too as Auro's mom.
I have been an admirer of her acting right from Parineeta and this time too she fulfills well my expectations. Arundhati Nag as Vidya's mom is being praised for good work in some reviews that I went through. For me she was not impressive at all. I was completely disappointed in her. Paresh Rawal as Abhishek's father reminded me of his own role in Cheeni-Kum. The bechara baap!!!Music by Illayaraja was OK, sometimes touching your heart sometimes not so, reminding many a times of Cheeni-Kum again. The direction was good. With screenplay I had serious problems. I have already mentioned some parts feeling like fill-ups, I was wondering why exactly there was so much of politics in that. The media-sequence was really bad both concept-wise and presentation-wise. It looked more like Ram Gopal Vemra films (that too the forgettable ones).
All in all, apart from Auro and Amitabh there is nothing in this movie to look for. Can watch it only for Amitabh's performance!!!