Billu (2009)

"Billu" is a bit slow and a simple film that tries to establish a relationship between the stardom and real life and presents a story of friendship. Storywise the film is simple and remains humble, and characters look simply down to earth and is quite well performed by Irfan Khan, Lara Dutta, and Shahrukh Khan. Few dialogues try to illustrate the line of separation between film fantasy and real life. This humble story can be appreciated for its simplicity, but the slow pace and unnecessary dragging of the film at the middle somehow makes it boring. Anyway. though the film is on a whole a bit an unmemorable time passer, its attempt to present the friendship between a poor barber and a film star is appreciable.Rating: 2 stars out of 4

Awfully bad movie with the very poor direction which is never expected from Priyadarshan. I couldn't make out if the movie was about 'billu barber' the character or it was all about Shahrukh Khan, actually it was all about Shahrukh Khan promo and that made it so boring and dull.The movie is listed in the 'comedy' genre but comedy was no-where to be found.Irfan Khan as always is an amazing actor but he made a mistake signing for this movie, I would suggest him to take the roles more carefully. Priyadarshan let everybody down. Songs are undoubtedly a major hit and they are really good too, but when you watch the movie, you'll be shocked that none of the songs fit into the movie at all, with a completely different production design and all.don't waste your time and money on this one.

Priyadarshan who is known for movies like Hera Pheri (Excellent) , Garam Masal (Entertaining) , Kyon Ki (touching). Works with SRK for the first time. Promos looked promising etc, but i guess the movie lacked a soul.Billu was just boring from starting to ending, SRK was busy promoting himself as a big star in the movie, although that is what the role demanded.. I was just getting tired of the filmposters and scenes from all his other movies, they should have come up with something innovative here. SRK had a superstar attitude throughout the whole movie except the last 10 minutes. Irfan Khan shines again, the amazing actor manages to perform really well in this bad written flick too, that is what an actors job is after all, very good Irfan! Lara doesn't have much scope, 10 minutes all together? or 20 maybe! SRK proves that he is a very commercial producer, and uses his celebrity friends for item songs so that the promos look cool. Kareena Kapoor sure looked good in Marjaani, Deepika looked OK, and Priyanka did a good job. Though the songs were horribly misplaced in the movie. Irfans kids in the movie do a great job, they were natural. Songs by pritam are of course a very big hit. They are all great, Marjaani, Love Mera Hit Hit, Khudaiya Khair/You get me rocking and reeling. Superb.+ Irfans performance + Songs - SRK Self promotion - Too damn commercial - B-oooooooring

This could have been a good rural movie with some good actors like Irfan Khan but for the item numbers which are so out of place, out of context that it is beyond the point of being ridiculous-pathetic. Why are the Indian producers spending enormous money on these item numbers? Om Puri who has proved himself to be a versatile actor is more a jester with his accident prone character. The part of the guest house manager acting as an inspector is so overdone it becomes more annoying than funny.The only redeeming scene is the last few scenes. The movie has no soul with erratic editing and dialog. Irfan Khan is the one actor who brings some serenity to an otherwise circus-like atmosphere that seems to prevail for the most part. This is typical SRK production with not much substance but hype. Lara Dutta has acquired new acting skills that come handy for a rural housewife-like making roti's bathing under waterfalls and making ransom demands to see an over-the-hill film actor. The scene where she falls out of the bed-day dreaming is plainly funny-"My god I had problems in the day-now at night too!"