Baabul: the review

Ravi Chopra and his "back to the 60s" theme shows up once again in his latest product, Baabul. As I experienced with my friends, the title was enough to scare a lot of people from watching the movie, expecting a Nirupa Roy-type tearjerker of a family drama.

Baabul is the story of a father-in-law who treats his daughter-in-law as his own daughter, plays matchmaker after she becomes a widow and fights his family over her rights inspite of being a widow. The movie puts across the message quite emphatically and tries to be as non-preachy as it can, but it takes an eternity for it to arrive at the real story...

The first half of the movie is almost totally pointless and a waste of reels for the most part. Knowing what the meat of its story is, thank God the movie didn't start with Salman Khan (their son)'s birth! (Oh no, wait, it did.) There is totally timepass stuff with Salman and Amitabh playing buddies, Salman's antics to woo Rani, marriage, happy unmarried and married life, and the usually family stuff that veteran Bollywoodian fans have seen more than enough of. The problem is, it almost contributes nothing to the real story, which doesn't begin till after the intermission. The love story is pretty timid, everybody laughs, sings and parties ala Hum Aapke Hai Kaun. Unfortunately, although Salman Khan looks somewhat younger than himself in a few of his earlier movies, he still looks too old to be a bachelor and then eventually marry Rani Mukherjee.

The second half elevates the movie and gets better and better till the end of the movie, so thankfully the movie doesn't leave a sour taste in the mouth at the end. The main plus of this part of this movie is that I felt that the tears were shed in the right amounts and at the right places, and so were words. There is no unnecessary preaching about the state of widows and Indian society by Amitabh's character, beyond what is necessary for the situation. Very often movies like these take an eternity to come to the point, and once they arrive there, take another eternity to get it over with. Fortunately the latter is not true for this movie. We did not always have to wait for the scene to get over after we have digested what it was saying.

The movie needs some serious editing, especially in the first half. The songs, except Bawari Piya Ki by Sonu Nigam and Bebasi by Kunal Ganjawala are eminently forgettable, but they are difficult to forget since they go on and on in the movie. Amitabh's singing worked much better in Baghbaan than here, where it seems more forced than natural. And what is it with people's ridiculous dressing sense? I swear I saw Chameli-type clothes on screen at least twice!

Amitabh is what Amitabh does, so I need not say more. This is a much more restrained performance by him, where his dialogues have more power than their delivery. Hema Malini looks her age and still unbelievably gorgeous. Alas she still has her funny and nostalgic accent :-) Salman is ok-ok in the movie and so is Rani. John Abraham once again tries very hard to move his face, but alas it is too frozen and metallic. His character has a lot of meat in this movie, but his face is all bones. But at least his metallic face matches his robotic body, a fact evident from his numerous attempts at dancing!

All said and done, as Poonam said, this movie tells a similar story as Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. But with a father-in-law replacing the 8-year old as the sutradhar of this love story, it seemed to make much more sense to me, even without all the other goodies that KKHH had to offer.