Bbuddah - Hoga Tera Baap

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Raveena Tandon, Hema Malini, Minissha Lamba, Sonal Chauhan, Neha Sharma, Sonu Sood, Prakash Raj, Charmi, Mahie Gill, Makrand Deshpande, Shahwar Ali, Rajeev Mehta, Rajeev Varma, Vishwajeet Pradhan,Atul Parchure , Abhishek Bachchan

Director: Puri Jagannath

Back in '80s there was a star who gave every other actor a run for his money. And that was the Angry Young Man Amitabh Bachchan. Over the year the superstar became the Iconic Figure of India; the biggest star ever but somewhere lost out his Angry Young Man image by taking up potent character roles. The star is back, reviving his angry action hero image with Bbuddah Hoga Tera Baap. Whether he succeeds in harping his own once upon a time earned glory or not remains to be seen. Viju (Amitabh Bachchan) is a retired gangster who returns to Mumbai to protect his son from the clutches of gangster Kabir (Prakash Raj). ACP Karan Malhotra (Sonu Sood) too is on Kabir's trail and pledges to clean the city in 2 months. Naturally, Kabir decides to bump him off. And shooters keep making failed attempts at his life. But story takes a turn when a secret that both Viju and Karan share is revealed. We wouldn't want to spoil the fun by disclosing it. So for the rest of the story watch the movie.

There seems to be this sudden south copying fixation in Bollywood with many filmmakers trying to revive the long dead 'heroism' that was a part of Hindi cinema in the '90s. Here too the attempts appear to be the same. Right from the promos of the film you can make out that the action scenes appear a copy of Dabangg which began the trend. From the promos of the movie it was absolutely clear that director Puri Jagannadh doesn't believe in subtlety. So every frame has AB showing off loud dressing style with floral prints shirt and leather jackets. But for the fans of Big B this isn't a deterrent. The real problem arises when the story begins and you keep looking up for some punch line or some trademark action scene but the film disappoints you at every juncture.

The story of Bbuddah Hoga Tera Baap is insipid with sub-plots popping up from everywhere leaving you in a fix to solve the mystery on your own. The dialogues form the biggest disappointment. Throughout the film there's just one cult dialogue of Amitabh used. Never again do any of his greatest dialogues come up. It seems that the writer never bothered going through the superstar's body of work! While dialogues are more or less lame, the cinematography by Amol Rathod is flawed at various occasions. The out of focus camera angles threaten to spoil the movie completely. However, editing by Shekhar is crisp and high-end.

The only reason why BBuddah would work or shall we say should work is Amitabh Bachchan. The superstar can still carry an entire film on his lone aging shoulders clearly stating in your face "Budha Hoga Tera Baap". For Amitabh Bachchan fans, this movie is a treat that they will never forget. But some hands-on one liners could have made this film memorable. Sonu Sood looks good but he needs to work on his romantic scenes. Yet another faux pas is the deletion of Raveena Tandon's item song from the film at the end moment. After the personal publicity done by Raveena about that song this truly may come as a shocker to her fans who are awaiting her comeback. Even her role is very miniscule and mindless. Hema Malini too gets wasted. Sonal Chauhan is average at best. You may have seen this bizarreness in the promos. Describing his relationship with Mumbai, “We’ve gotten wet in the rains together,” Amitabh Bachchan’s Vijju (or is it Birju, Bijju, Virju?), a poor parody of his old self, says: These days, newbies ("naya bachcha log”) copy my style, my songs He then breaks into Khaike paan Banaraswala, which is of course from Don, recently remade with Shah Rukh Khan in the central role. A medley of Bachchan’s old songs follow.

This fellow, we’re told, and now I’m talking about the character and not the actor (though the two are inseparable, as it were), is the “founder member of the Mumbai mafia.” He seems more the first citizen of ‘Tacky-stan’ to me. He wears two watches on his wrist, always a scarf around his neck, dark shades with lemon green glasses, or yellow rims, and jeans that have dragon prints above the knee. To be fair, mid-way through the movie, the filmmakers it seems did fire their mithai shop stylist. And gave their hero suits and shirts that might him suit him better. But then, this hero wouldn’t have cared either way. His general demeanour, he says, doesn’t match his age. Or anybody else’s, for that matter.

Vijju says beep, when he wants to curse; it keeps his tongue (zubaan) clean. He has a wife (Hema Malini), who separated from him because of his girlfriend (Raveena Tandon). At the shopping mall, he finds both of them at the same time. He looks at his wife, and the Hema Malini song from Naseeb blares from the screen, ‘Mere naseeb mein tu hai ke nahin’. He looks at his girlfriend, the Raveena hit ‘Tu cheez badi hai mast mast’ starts. Vijju’s actually back from Paris, before which, he was in the prison. He has a son, who’s a cop, and knows nothing about his dad. Still, this isn’t quite the situation from Big B’s Aakhree Rasta (1986). This police officer (Sonu Sood), who could himself pass off for a poor man’s ‘70s Bachchan, is on the Mafia’s hit-list. The villain, Prakash Raj by now a stock southern import for all ‘80s type Bollywood movies is on the lookout for a sharpshooter to kill off the cop. Vijju joins his gang. So he can save his son instead. Hence: Thoda action. Thoda Jackson!

The songs may still please those inside Juhu’s Rock Bottom where Vijju usually hangs out. The comic track could bring an occasional smile or two. The hero but looks a bit of a mutant doing action on photo stills, besides other similar silliness. As floating statistics go, about 70 per cent of current India was born after Sholay. They clearly have little clue about Salim-Javed’s dialogue heavy, handsome, lanky, ‘angry young man’ (Trishul, Deewar) that single-handedly, sometimes, even made the Bollywood film script irrelevant in the ‘70s (Lawaaris, Sharaabi). The persona was good enough. I’d rather they watched Rajkumar Santoshi’s Khakee (2004) for belated education.

But then again, the director here’s also an unabashed fanboy. So many of Bachchan’s blinded filmmakers unfortunately are. At the end, he writes a long tribute to his leading actor, suggesting how this is the sort of role he’d been missing him play for the past many years. He wishes to bring that 'angry young man' back to theatres. Ummm, what exactly was he missing again? Mard, Toofan, Jaadugar Folklore has it that wherever the Big B stands, the queue begins. It's time to queue up for a film that reads like a running commentary on the Bachchan legend. Blessed are the generations that get to see India's most iconic and enduring screen-hero play a variation on all his most cherished roles.

And then some more. To the angry Vijay persona that the Big B created through those brilliantly-written films of Salim-Javed in the 1970 and 80s, the actor still sprightly enough to make all the bachcha-log of Bollywood look like performing midgets, adds dollops of wry cynicism that goes well with our times. Make no mistake Telugu cinema's most successful director Puri Jagannath is not just a Bachchan fan. He's also a master storyteller. To the mix 'n' match tale of an Angry Young Man's journey into his advancing years of unrelenting lividness and self-mockery, Puri brings a crackling contemporary commitment to telling a story that has no room for humbug only space for hectic hijinks. Written with supersonic dexterity, the screenplay races through numbered days in the life of a Paris-returned gangster who is called back to Mumbai by a gangster with a serious concentration problem (Prakash Raj) to finish off a particularly troublesome cop(Sonu Sood).

It's a skilfully written yarn that doesn't stray into the yawn zone for even a second. Every character, even the relatively minor ones like the Bachchan's landlady who keeps jabbering to an unseen husband in Dubai, adds a sheen of zing to the shindig. Though the narration seems to leap before it looks, the director actually manages to create a controlled atmosphere of plot development within the chaos of Mumbai's streets clogged with scampering gangsters, cops and their minions. Jagannath Puri displays a fabulous flair for the funny and the ferocious. The comic scenes contour the mega-star's proclivity to laugh at himself and the self-important world around him comprising gangsters, collegians, cops and other on-the-move urbanites. Vishal-Shekhar's austerely-used music creates evolved rhythms for the Bachchan persona. You can't miss the insistent beat.

As for the action, the camera (Amol Rathod) moves to the rhythm of the Big B's super-controlled body language creating for the assorted villains a kind of disembodied dynamism that we see in a far cruder avatar in the South, in the cinema of Rajnikanth. Here, it is the Big B at work. And boy, that does mean something, doesn't it! The iconic super-hero maneouvres through his tailormade role with a devastating dexterity, creating a celluloid combustion that leaves a trail of smoking guns, screaming tyres and satiated expectations that audiences felt and experienced in the heydays of the Bachchan Raj. The reign never ends thank God for small mercies! "Buddah Hoga Tera Baap" offers a pleasurable romp into the star-power of the Big B. The rapport that his character builds up through some lovely actresses of several generations (Hema Malini, Raveena Tandon, Sonal Chauhan, Charmee) is so bloody robust and funny, you are left wondering how much of the sly subtle foxy flirtatiousness comes from the star and how much of it was there in the screenplay.

Undoubtedly well-written and directed with sure-handedness that cannot hide Puri Jagannath's boundless admiration for the Bachchan phenomenon, "Bbuddah...Hoga Tera Baap" is one of those garam-masala products that's far clever than the outward flamboyance of the main character and execution suggest. Cut through the blizzard of bravura that the Big B projects so insouciantly and at heart this is an emotional father-son story. See how cleverly the director moves from a kind of italicized derringdo to a clamped emotional finale See how skilfully the other actors support the Big B's towering presence. Prakash Raj as the arch-villain brings a sense of madness to the proceedings while Makarand Deshpande as a quiet gangster is a glorious foil to the Big B's repartees and rejoinders. Sonu Sood as the cop who keeps running into the old-young super-hero manages to hold his own in front of the Big B. And Raveena as the Big B's besotted bombshell beloved from the past has herself a blast.

So do we. Right to the last frenetic shootout, we are with the director laughing cheering and saluting the star-power of this super-phenomenon named Amitabh Bachchan. And when the Big B does a medley of all his old songs it's time to forget that the Bbuddah has just become a grand-baap all over again. Just get up and dance to the rhythm of the Big B's star power. Don't waste time watching the smut. "Bbuddah...Hoga Tera Baap" is the past present and future of mainstream entertainment. Frankly, if not for Amitabh Bachchan, the film would have been just an ordinary affair if at all the script was any consideration to begin with. And that's because not just is this an attempt to make it a wholesome masala affair, there are so many unnecessary ingredients that have been added which results in certain scenes not just getting repetitive but also unnecessary. This is where one wonders that if all the film would have been relatively more serious than comical in nature and the temptation to make it a wholesome masala affair by incorporating irrelevant/inconsequential sub-plots would have been resisted, 'Bbuddah....' would have truly turned out to be a film that was being promised.

So while for an audience such scenes only make one feel a little restless, it is the action, drama and dialogue-baazi featuring Bachchan in his 'subtly angry' mood that makes 'Bbuddah...' a worthy affair after all. His scenes with the underworld are a pleasure to watch and especially his interaction with Prakash Raj, the villain of the enterprise, are sheer powerhouse. Also, the points where he gets into a chin-to-chin drama with a fellow goon makes for an interesting watch that makes one stand up and clap.

The biggest culprit of the enterprise though is the entire coffee house setting where one ends up seeing as many as half a dozen scenes with most of them being not quite relevant to the basic plot. Honestly, after a while one ends up saying 'Oh no, not again' once the camera zooms in to the coffee shop which appears to be a big sponsor of the enterprise as well. And then there is this rather extended sub plot of Sonu Sood (playing an ACP) in a not-so-certain relationship with Sonal Chauhan which doesn't even hold secondary importance to the film. Thankfully the only sub plot that still holds some interest level amongst the audience is Raveena Tandon's crush for Big B that has arrived with a 20 years extended warrantee but still refuses to evaporate. She is indeed the 'mast' girl here and the lunch table scene with her baby girl Charmee joining in is a riot. The same can't be said about Hema Malini's scenes with Big B which are not just predictable and clich�d but also boring.

Also, there are sequences where you wonder if there were scenes that were primarily written as 'fill in the blanks' affair. Him giving advice to a nubile girl about the guy who may not be right for her. Him standing next to a DJ and pumping up the jam. Him being the point of interest of women across three generations. Him 'setting up' a young man with his girlfriend. You end up asking - 'Why?' Not that any of this is harmful by any means or offensive. It's just that none of this has any remote connection to the promise being made of 'Bbuddah' being a film that would make people remember Bachchan of the era gone by.

That's because remember Bachchan and you want to see Tiger running with a 'chaku' in his hand and hunting for Bakhtavar in the docks. Remember Bachchan and you want to see 'Shahenshah' destroying the entire 'tabela' on his own. Remember Bachchan and you want to see Vijay Deenanath Chauhan challenging the biggest dons to Mumbai to come and eliminate him. Remember Bachchan and you want to see him tell a 'cockroach tale' or talk to himself in the mirror. So even if the man at the hot seat is called 'Vijju' here, our very old 'Vijay' is definitely missed.

So what keeps this two hour long homage still manage a decent run at the least? Well, who else but Bachchan himself who actually ends up doing what he has done to countless films even in his prime 'Rise over the script'. That's because eventually it is him only who lends a damage control to this loosely made film that doesn't quite have a solid plot to begin with. Despite the patchy treatment and an uneven narrative, it is Big B who demonstrates yet again that who is the 'baap' of the show as he ensures that whatever he does for the camera, at least the conviction shows.