Paa - A Review

It's been almost a week since I wrote anything. The week has been hectic with trip to Chicago, ankle sprain and work. There goes my resolution of writing everyday!

Finally I watched "Paa" this week. After strong recommendations, reviews and mass approvals for this movie, I was slightly disappointed after watching it. No doubt Amitabh Bachhan's (AB) performance was brilliant - largely attributed to his make up and the lisp to talk like a 12 year old. It sure takes creativity and imagination to make a 67 year old talk like and behave like 12 year old.

What was disappointing was that the movie lacked emotion. The movie was staged around a 12 year old boy suffering from this rare disease - Progeria, but it failed to give it's central theme more depth and understanding of the character. The boy's life is shown to be perfectly normal, school life is superb with a lot of friends and no social stigma whatsoever. Traditionally you will see this flaw in some other Balki directed movies as well - "Cheeni Kum" wherein you have this extremely happy cancer suffering girl "Sexy". The whole personification of some of his characters lack reality and seem to be overtly precocious. By the end it seemed just like any other Bollywood flick with the only difference being a child born with Progeria.

Maybe I was benchmarking the movie to "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and in comparison the movie definitely failed. Also, in comparison to the movie  "Taare Zameen Pe" which was staged around the central theme of Dyslexia where the character was an 8 year old boy, Paa was not a comparison. While it was a novel idea and a great performance by AB, I felt the movie could have been so much better for the 2.5 hours time that it ran for. Poor dialogues and average music did not make things any better. The great thing was the movie did not waste its time on showing the early romance between Vidya Balan and Abhishek Bachaan, which ideally should have given more time to focus on the central character- 12 year old boy. It should have focused more on challenges faced by the boy, his emotions, his understanding of the disease and the world as seen from his vision.

In all, the movie lacks to integrate and have a unified central theme. The only take away from the movie is the brilliant make up done for AB and his performance which truly has no parallel. For only that, I recommend you make time for it and watch.