Baabul (2006)

A favorite past time of my wife and I is to take advantage of the great collection of foreign language feature films in our local library.In the last two years, we have rediscovered the wonder of great cinema through films from all over the world. It is so rewarding to view cinema that has not been designed with 12-year olds in mind.But there are exceptions to our overwhelmingly positive experience. Two nights ago, we placed the Baabul video in the DVD player and waited to be enriched and entertained. After fifteen minutes, we both decided that this film was unwatchable.In those few minutes.......a father meets his son in an airport. The son has been abroad studying. Amazingly,they don't recognize each other and engage into a ridiculous dialogue at the end of which they realize who they both are because they are going to the same address (or something like that). It is obvious that both characters, father and son, are computer literate. Surely they must have exchanged photographs in those years. And what son would not recognize his father after seven years? The only word to describe that kind of scriptwriting is stupid....father and son and family then engage in a car drag race ...in the middle of heavy traffic. Everybody is having a grand old time with much laughter and good spirit! The fact that dozens of other people's lives are endangered just make the event more exciting! Now this car chase is not brought about by events in the story i.e. it is not someone running away from bad guys etc.. It is a car chase for FAMILY FUN! This kind of film making is not only pitiful, it is also immoral in my view. Who would want to view a two-hour movie about of such imbeciles?At this stage, we pressed on the eject button unable to believe that any film maker who produces this type of moronic material can redeem himself in the rest of the movie.

If the title of this summary weren't self-explanatory, then let me begin my ranting about how clichéd this movie actually was. If one were to write a documentary about clichés, they could use this movie to supplement any single example of cliché that one could possibly think of.Lets begin by talking about the story line. The first-half, which dealt with a love story and father-son relations as dry as could be. While the father son relation between Amitabh and Salman was passable, there seemed to be absolutely no chemistry between Salman/Rani. First of all, they seemed to just rush the love story, deciding that it wasn't really all that important, as Salman wouldn't even be in the second half of the movie.The comedy in the first half wasn't great either. Parts were OK, but the writers obviously thought they did a better job than they actually did.The second half of the movie proved to be one of the most predictable and boring scripts ever. Its as if the producer deciding to bring in script writers from TV soaps and wrap up the script. Furthermore, the theme was unbelievably outdated.Question>What do you get when you mix a bad storyline, with a bad director, bad writers, a horrible theme, and an extremely outdated moral message? Answer:Baabul

Being out of the loop I did not know about this movie until now. I do not know what the general reaction to this movie was, can only hope it was a super flop. The point of the movie seems to be that widow remarriage is a good thing. Agreed. But this movement had started more than a century ago and I don't think exists in the upper classes in urban Mumbai (which is where the movie is based). So, the movie should have been set where this is still an issue (like the movie WATER). OK now let's allow the movie some artistic license. So, what is it that we learn from this movie? We learn that women have the right to a happy and fulfilling life even if their husbands are dead. And how are they to have this life - by getting themselves another HUSBAND!!! And that too she should not fight for her rights and demand such a thing but hope that her patriarchal father-in-law has the goodness of heart to ALLOW her to remarry. Really, is the concept of women's rights, women's own identity so alien to Bollywood? AAKHIR KYON. This was a commercial movie made in Bollywood more than 30 YEARS ago and even that talked about the importance and necessity of a woman having her own identity. Seriously, does Bollywood suffer from Collective Amnesia? I can only end with AAKHIR KYON?

Okay, in all fairness this movie didn't deserve to flop and perhaps it wouldn't have had it not been for the controversial issues surrounding the plot and well, yeah maybe that Salman Khan. Nevertheless, I would say definitely see it (if you haven't already) for the stellar cast, awe-inspiring leading performances by Amitabh Bachchan and Rani Mukherjee, as well as memorable supporting turns by John Abraham (who manages to upstage Khan, with very little effort might I add), Om Puri and Hema Mallini.In summary, the film revolves around a young man named Avinash (played by Khan) who returns home to India upon studying overseas and bumps into the girl of his dreams, Milli (played by Mukherjee). In order to win her affection he plays down his rich boy persona by inventing series of lies that help the attraction and eventual love between blossom. But sooner than latter the truth comes out and Avinash's dad (Played by Bachchan) steps in to plead on his son behalf keep his son from being deserted by his sweetheart. All of this leads to a very dramatic and overdone (mostly on the part of Mr. Salman Khan and his weird theatrics) marriage proposal. But not before we are introduced to Rajat (played by John Abraham) Milli's best-friend since childhood who (in case you haven't guesses it) harbours deep affection for Milli as well. Nevertheless, he keeps his feelings secret and allows Milli to marry. Years later a horrible tragedy reunites the two childhood friends and leads to the major dose of controversy in the film, which ties the whole plot together.My main issues with Baabul were: 1. The length - especially because the unnecessary scenes were less than few and far between. They had a good story to tell but stuffed it up with a bunch of crap at the seams. They should have cut a lot of the Avinash scenes because in all essence, the meat of the movie had to do with Milli and her father-in-law.2. "Buddy! Buddy! Buddy." Nough Said.3. The whole scene surrounding Avinash and Milli bumping into each other at the airport but not formally meeting has been so overdone in Hindi movies that I could have done without seeing it one more time. Then to add insult atop of injury, they also had the nerve to do the very cliché 'walk away, look back. walk away look back' lovers last glance crap in another scene. Um, hello! Get creative.4. The painfully shameless product endorsements of items like Taj Mahal Chai, Sergie Donuts or whatever it said on that shirt Avinash was wearing, Eros Jewellry, Dove soap, Audi, Mercedes Benz just to mention a few. If you're going to roll it with the credits, why do you also feel the need to bombard us with the products during the film?5. The drag racing scene between father and son at the beginning of the movie, how irresponsible and unnecessary was that??? Bollywood needs to stop glorifying dangerous and reckless behaviour.There was absolutely no suspense within the film, you could predict what would happen next in almost every scene but thankfully the explosive ending vindicated the entire nearly 3 hour film. Without any upfront competition from any actress her age in the entire film, Rani Mukherji had room to shine, glow, shimmer and whatever else they could afford for her to do throughout the film. She owned every scene she was in and I must admit that she was better (both in her acting as well as dressing) in this film than in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. The music was also very good, especially the hauntingly beautiful score. I give Baabul an A-