Atlee’s assistant aces the action in this massy family-drama-meets-mirth ‘n’ mayhem entertainer. Baby John is to movie entertainment what video games are to kids on a summer break. Great fun but nothing to engage in a discussion about once done.
For those who have seen the Tamil original Theri, Baby John still has some surprises in store especially in the second half when all hell breaks loose, the revving cars and rata-tating guns go amok and the villains seem to be high on depravity.
Director Kalees doesn’t believe in understatement, and that’s an understatement! Every character speaks in exclamation marks. Every plotting propulsion is a pretext for streetside rhetorics. No one breathes easy in Atlee/Kalees’ world. Not when the world is a highly unsafe place for children and girls. Some has to do the dirty work.
The evil caucus is so irredeemably vile, that it comes as no surprise when a little girl makes a plea to the archvillain (Jackie Shroff, playing a crass cross between Mogambo and Mahakal) at the end to reform.The villain shrugs off the pearls of wisdom. The little girl then turns to her Dad and tells him to deal with the scumbag.
At the end a mob of angry young girls is seen descending on the villain, a la Ketan Mehta’s Mirch Masala.
This is the only LOL moment in the film, though I am not sure it is meant to be as such. This is a work of straightforward kitsch which takes itself dead seriously. There is no dearth of diligently designed lighter moments in the first half when Baby John(Varun Dhawan) and his little daughter Khushi(Zara Zyanna ) do those fun things that fathers and daughters do in films where the family is seriously troubled after the initial display of family bliss.
Varun and the child actor play the father-daughter game over cutely. But the Kerala locations are soothing. The songs, though are terrible and eminently Himmatwala-ish. The only surprise here is that we don’t see Baby John pleating his precocious daughter’s hair. Single parent and not pleating his laadli’s hair. Now that’s revolutionary!
The family-drama aspirations are quickly put to sleep as Baby John throws aside his soft-father mantle to show the baddies what daddys can do when pushed to the corner.
Much of the action is constructed with the concentration of a man focussing on his hair care just before a students’ reunion forgetting about his wear. If only same care had gone into plotting remake in a fresh light rather than erecting a fossilized brick and mortar façade that ceased to be dependable after its expiry date.
That said, Baby John is fun provided you are not searching for any serious relevance to the widespread shrieking bouts that the characters indulge in. It is sobering to see the two leading ladies Keerthy Suresh and Wamiqa Gabbi being wasted, one more than the other.Add the talented Sheeba Chadha to the wasted womanhood club(wasted , as two of them are bumped off in quick succession as though their dates ran out).
Go for Baby John without expectations. Its 1980s’ swag will surprise you. And wait for the post-climax surprise when ‘Bhai Jaan’ Salman Khan joins Baby John in a joint promise of a sequel.
This, we’ve got to see.
