- Review: Baba
- Director : Raj R Gupta
- Star Cast: Deepak Dobriyal, Nandita Patkar, Aryan Menghji, Spruha Joshi, Abhijeet Khandkekar, Chittranjan Giri & Jaywant Wadkar
- Screenplay: Manish Singh
- Producer: Maanayata Dutt & Ashok Subhedar
Quick Viewpoint: The basic one liner for ‘Baba’ does have a lot of emotional strength. And to some extent the film does explore it well up until the first half. But somewhere in the second half it loses it’s focus and then never really recovers.
What Works?
- As said above, the basic story line of the film, where two sets (out of which one set is deaf and dumb) of parents are battling for a kid, is very believable. The situation that has caused this conflict might seem slightly filmy but the complexity of the scenario is from the real world. No parties are wrong yet one of them has to loose!
- The lead cast of the deaf and dumb parents (Dobriyal and Patkar) and the kid (Aryan) belong together in every way. Their chemistry works even more effectively as they are made to communicate without words!
- The film is technically well made, the music especially works really well to give it a light-hearted playful tone mainly in the first half.
- Even when the second half has issues the end is effective, not that it undoes the errors of the film but it still has lasting impression. It is not overly melodramatic and neither is it emotionally dull.
What Fails?
- In the second half the film wastes too much time on a very irrelevant, unimportant sub track! The whole track could have been summed up in 5 minutes but the film wastes at least 20 minutes or more over it.
- In the end the film gives a sensible vocal perspective to what it wanted to say about the society which treats deaf and dumb individuals differently. Unfortunately the film fails to imbibe the message into the actual screenplay and simply covers it in the climax.
- The deaf and dumb parents are understandably too attached to the kid but never do they realize the importance of a different life for their kid. Maybe unintentionally the film projects them as selfish parents who couldn’t see what’s best for their kid beyond their love for him.
- The other parents portrayed by Spruha Joshi and Abhijeet Khandkekar deserved more exploration as characters in the film. They even have a legit sub-track worthy conflict between them! But the film fails at exploring them and making them lesser important in the story which doesn’t make us understand their emotional side of the story.
Final Verdict: ‘Baba’ is a decent film that can be seen with the family. But with minimum expectations.
