Varun Dhawan to star in Karees’ Hindi remake of ‘Tehri’

At one point in Baby John, a little girl named Khushi (Zara Zayanna) hides under a bed and screams in fear. Outside, bad guys are crushing her caretakers. She hears the commotion and expects something bad to happen.

Watching this scene, I wondered why her father, the titular Baby John (played by Varun Dhawan ) did not train her. Nadia is so good at dealing with violent attacks that when one happens, Honey shoves her in the trunk, puts headphones in her ears, listens to a song and tells her not to come out.

Incidentally, both Nadia and Khushi belong to a certain club in the Indian film industry: that of decidedly precocious kids who talk like adults. (I think of the sexy Cheeni Kum, who suffers from cancer, as president of this club.) It’s supposed to be adorable and cute, but it often comes off as annoying and manipulative.

All this being said, ‘Baby John’ packs star power (including a cameo from Salman Khan), gorgeous visuals, ear-bleeding sounds, dreamy, flashy songs, and a double dose of flashbacks. It’s a movie that will blow you away with its ever-changing story. Identities and various villains appear, but despite all of that, the Flash can’t get you. At 161 minutes long, the film gives you enough headroom to wander down the rabbit hole and make random associations like the one between Khushi and Nadia.

That was not the case in the source material. Atlee’s 2016 blockbuster Theri was named after the Tamil word for ‘shine’, and that word had a lot of sparkle in it. The director’s signature combination of action, emotion, and social commentary worked seamlessly. Starring DCP A. Vijay Kumar and his non-violent alter ego Joseph Kuruvilla, Vijay was a very clever superhero who moved in and out of the frame in slow motion, but never cried or turned tender. There was also. In “Baby John,” Atlee (who serves as a producer with his wife, Priya Atlee) injects his story with steroids. The Hindi remake is bigger and louder, but not necessarily better.

During the promotional campaign for Baby John, we were reminded that this was a “Christmas mass release.” In other words, this will be a mass commercial entertainer, or what director Prashanth Neel calls an “anti-gravity film.” Consistency, logic, and the laws of physics do not apply there. What is needed is to provide what Atlee calls a “stadium moment,” a collective sense of exhilaration in the theater. This is a difficult and delicate art, and Atlee is an expert at it. It may be recalled that Captain Vikram Rathore entered the jawan.

Writer/director Calise is unable to convey the cinematic highs with the same panache. The main reason for this is that I put too much effort into creating my work. Each beat is emphasized by music or dialogue, and exaggeration is the default mode. So Dhawan, whose work has been as diverse as “Dishoom” and “October”, is known for its slow motion, low angles, shades removed and added to emphasize swag, and action sequences that fly and kill without doing anything. He captures multiple moments with complete hero treatment. I’m sweating. But in all this, the filmmakers forget to make Satya/John distinctive and memorable.

The film treats police avatars with respect and celebrates police brutality. Sathya commits murder by torturing, castrating, and burning alive the men he kills, but the men he kills do terrible things – mostly to women, who use him as disposable fodder for violence. actions are made to appear justified. Female characters are shot, beaten, raped, burned, and trafficked. In various locations, young girls are smuggled in containers and animal carcasses. All this just makes the main character look more heroic. In one scene, he is called desh ki ladkiyon ka rakwala, the protector of Indian women.

Carys is also particular about making his villains larger than life. In Teri, Mahendran effectively played a corrupt minister who destroys Vijay’s life. He was evil without any further prosperity. Jackie Shroff is having a ball playing Babbar Shah here. His signature move is lounging in a traditional Kerala easy chair. He likes this easy chair so much that he even carries it to the shipping dock for the climactic showdown. But while Shroff poses a convincing threat, beyond a certain point we lose track of Babbar’s many nefarious activities, and how often and why he’s in jail. .

(On a side note, can filmmakers find other locations for the action? This year, we’ve seen shipping wharves in the background in Devala: Part 1, Pushpa 2: Rules, Singham Again, and Yudra) It was seen.)

Above all, Baby John is a showcase of Dhawan becoming the quintessential masala hero. He starts romances, becomes a doting father and loving son, takes aerobic dance seriously, and of course starts fighting. At one point he somersaults on top of a horse. He appears in nearly every frame and approaches things with fierce honesty. Dhawan’s father, David Dhawan, is a master masala entertainer and it is a certain joy to watch his crowd-loving son perform from the heart. However, the one thing that bothers me a little is the complex plot, which switches from romance to action to the kidnapped girls to flashbacks so abruptly that I get whiplash and my eyes glaze over.

The two lead actors, Keerthy Suresh, who is making her Hindi debut, and Wamiqa Gabi, who is making her debut in popular cinema, are not quite up to the task. Both are great actors, but you have to look elsewhere to see their talent. I recommend the Telugu paintings ‘Mahanati’ for Suresh and the ‘Jubilee’ series for Gabi.

Baby John is relentless and joyless. We needed a better mass for Christmas.