Paa – “Auro” Steals the Show!

It’s quite often that we have dreamt of living our childhood again. To go back to those good old school days. To play pranks on our friends, to play cricket, to spend hours in front of TV playing games! “Paa” takes you to a two-and-a-half hour ride of experiencing those days. Paa is a simple story of relationships, emotions, love – told with innocence.

Cut to King Edward VII School, Lucknow, UP – a school that comes into an unexpected limelight after it organises an exhibition – “The Vision of India”. The school invites a young, dynamic and promising leader and MLA – Mr. Amol Arte [Abhishek Bachchan] as the chief guest for this event. The young leader selects the winning entry into the exhibition, and co-incidently the piece of art turns out to be by a 12-year old kid with a very genetically rare disease – “Progeria” that causes accelerated ageing [Amitabh Bachchan, Mind-blowing!] who lives with his unwed mother [Vidhya Balan] and grandmother [Arundhati Naag]. Thus Auro gets exposed to a sudden publicity and the media keeps on hitting the school gates hunting for “Auro”. All these events and series of incidents triggers a very rare bond of friendship between the diseased Auro and the young politician, as they start to converse through emails, chats and phone.

As the friendship grows, and Auro begins to discover that his MLA-friend is ready to fulfil his innocent and stubborn demands, he discovers another thing – the MLA is none other then his very own “Paa”, who did not want him to be born. With this, starts Auro’s quest to find his Paa again, and re-unite his Paa with his Maa. How Auro does it forms the rest of the story.

The story is quite simple, and told from the perspective of the innocent kid. The sub-plots of the story – the Abhishek – Vidhya love story and break up, is cut shot into a song and a few scenes. Understandably, the motive was not to deviate too much from the main plot. The other sub-plot, Abhishek’s political life and his struggles with the opposition and media is also very well handled (with a message to the media too), that may remind you of the Anil Kapoor's super hit – Nayak.

The songs are not a hindrance, and go well with the narrative. There are a few very well shot moments – like Auro’s entry is one of the best scenes of the film, wherein Auro heads on towards the stage with fright and anxiety on his face in the begining, but when he receives the prize, starts doing the monkey dance by looking at his friends. Director R. Balki's direction deserves a word of praise here.

The dialogues are very well written, with just the type of innocent questions that children ask. Music by the south maestro – Illayaraja also builds up the mood and essence of the story.

On acting front, Vidhya Balan does well as the mother of the diseased child, who moulds herself the way her child wants. Abhishek Bachchan role, very much inspired by Rahul Gandhi of the real world. A young and dynamic leader, who dreams of making politics a better place, and who goes on to the slums and meets the people to hear their grievances. Abhishek is very sincere and accurate in his role.

But the real show-stealer is Amitabh Bachchan. This movie entirely belongs to him. The way he has jumped into the skin of Auro has no words of praise. The innocence, the mannerisms, the walking style, the voice, the facial expressions, the naughty chuckle with shrugging shoulders and hands covering his face – they all are too exact to guess it was a 65 year old man playing a 12 year old kid. Amitabh Bachchan has done a variety of roles and this is yet another feather (quite a big one) in his cap. He is a real maestro and a living legend of the acting world! He is simply stupendous.

On an ending note, Amitabh Bachchan is very lucky. Not because he is a super-star or that he is blessed with talent. But because, with Paa, he could relive his childhood again! I would term this movie as a must-see.

My Rating : *** 1/2

Front of the Class - An Ocean of Inspiration

A very few movies leave their imprints in your mind. And when that happens, we know that we have just seen a masterpiece. Today, after seeing the movie “Front of the Class”, I have the same feeling. This Hollywood movie from the production house “Hallmark” is a masterpiece in itself. It’s based on a book an autobiography by Brad Cohen (with Lisa Wysocky)

Cut to Georgia, USA, where we are introduced to Mr. Brad Cohen, who’s ambitious, focussed and a dreamer. This story is about Brad and his “constant companion”.

Brad’s constant companion is a rear mental disease that he is suffering from, which is called the “Tourette Syndrome”. As a result of this disease, Brad can’t help but doing funny noises that sounds like barking accompanied with twitches and jerky movents of head and legs. He does it everywhere – including the classroom, and that’s where his challenges begin. No one around Brad, are able to understand his behaviour – his teachers, fellow students and even his father. This makes his life a living hell!

He grows up wanting to achieve his dream job – the teacher. But his constant companion always poses the biggest hurdle. He is rejected in each and every interviews one after the other because of his Tourette syndrome. But his dedication of never letting his constant companion to win, keeps him going. The journey of Brad Cohen, right from his childhood, to the struggles of finding a job and then eventually getting one, and then his success is very well portrayed by Director Peter Werner.

The screenplay of showing Brad’s present life-story and his childhood in parallel is done quite nicely. Jimmy Wolk playing as the diseased Brad is fantastic, and does justice to his character. Treat Williams as the frustrated father also does well. The legendary Patricia Heaton as Brad’s understanding mother is sincere in a very significant and supporting role to the central character.

The Best thing about the movie that makes it a classic, is it’s message. It conveys a message that one should keep on chasing the dreams despite the hurdles and hardships life offers. It also gives a lesson on how to cope with your disabilities and learn from them, don’t let it stop you, and how to keep going. And last, it educates about the rear disease of which many of us are oblivious of – The Tourette Syndrome.

This movie is one of the best I have seen, and certainly the one which I am going to remember and take inspiration from, for a very long time to come.

My Rating: ****

Kaminay - Age old plot, with a sprinkle of novelty

Sibling rivalry, gangsters and dirty politics… make up the main ingredients of Vishal Bharadwaj’s “Kaminay”. Vishal Bharadwaj has maintained his usual style of film-making – that is, story telling, along with raising some important issues of the society. And with Kaminay, Vishal has raised a couple of issues.

Cut then to New Bombay… sorry… Navi Mumbai where the story starts, with the narration by one of the two twin brothers – Charlie [Shahid Kapur]. Charlie is involved in the dirty business of fixing horse races. The company is led by three Bengali brothers. The company finds itself in a big loss as a result of a double-cross by one of their jockey. The jockey reveals a name – Francis who threatened him to fix the match against the Bengali Brothers. Now, the Bengali brothers along with Charlie, are in the quest of Francis – or rather as Charlie calls it – “Franfif”.

Over to Guddu [Shahid kapur again], the second of the twin brothers, who is sober, and works in an NGO. If his brother pronounces “S” as “F”, Guddu, also has a speech deformity and that is – Stammering. Guddu is involved in a love affair with a girl named Sweety [Priyanka Chopra], and is in a deep soup when he discovers that his girl is pregnant from him – at a time when he is not ready for marriage. Ill fate has it, when he discovers that his girl is the sister of a political leader [Amol Gupte] of Maharashtra, who hates North Indians, especially from UP, hailing in “Mumbai”. Sounds familiar? It did to me as well. Now, the UP-hater discovers that his sister is planning marriage with a UP boy, and is all set to catch hold of the boy.

The plot then unfolds with some gang wars taking place, gun shots, things falling, people running here and there, and the camera moving too fast to comprehend what’s going on. Understanding the gang-wars was much more difficult then understanding the software source-code in my office. All I know is that, Charlie, trying to find Franfif, gets involved with a fight with another gang involved in trafficking of cocaine, which is in a guitar case. Charlie somehow gets hold of this guitar case, and the gang is on the lookout for Charlie and of course the Guitar case. And as all the “twin-brother” plots, the politician’s gang who is on the lookout for Guddu, finds Charlie, and the Drug-trafficking gang, finds Guddu. What happens next is best explained by watching the movie.

With this plot, Vishal Bharadwaj has tried to raise two issues – Hating of the UP and North Indians hailing in Maharashtra is not called for, and that these politicians get involved in such a movement only to garner votes and not for the welfare of “Marathi Manus”.

A second issue that Vishal is trying to highlight is that of speech deformity. Charlie cannot pronounce “S”, and Guddu stammers. He has highlighted how speech deformity can be laughed at. Also, for the first time, I'm glad to see that stammering is projected in the right way, in a hindi movie. It’s projected as it is, and not as a comedy. The issues that stammering people tend to lock themselves in their own shell is also highlighted beautifully in a scene.

On acting front, Shahid as the two twin brothers is sincere in his role. He gives his best with both the roles. Priyanka as Guddu’s beloved has also a meaty role, and plays it quite well. The only other character to leave a mark on the audiences is the UP-hater politician – Bhope [Amol Gupte]. The actor plays the role quite well, and will get noticed.

Music is mediocre, with only one song – “Pehli baar mohabbat” catchy enough. The cinematograhy of the movie may sometimes make you feel dizzy. All in all, the movie may not be a must watch, but good enough for a one-time watching experience.

My Rating: **