Narcissism, 3 item songs and a heart warming performance

02Mar09

Sharukh Khan loves himself. We all know that but do we want to know, how much? I guess SRK wants us to know and thinks one OSO wasn’t enough, otherwise how else you can explain a movie about a small town barber, played earnestly by Irfan Khan, to leave an aftertaste of a superstar played by the superstar himself. There is even a screensaver of moments from all his movies!

There is a subtle difference between being earnest and trying to be earnest. Subtlety however is not a word Priyadarshan knows and instead of affecting you or moving you the movie just becomes a caricature of the village life and would have been a total disaster if not for Irfan’s Khan understated performance. Irfan proves that he is the real deal as far as mainstream acting is considered. He is Billu, the barber.

Other than the well shot opening credits there is nothing that shows any semblance of realism and sincerity and even the North Indian village Budbuda where superstar Saahir Khan has come to shoot the Hindi remake of STAR WARS(?), looks more like Alleppey, at least when the ladies take a bath it does.

Although to be fair to Priyadarshan at least the dialogues seem like they could have been spoken up north what with words like nimnaankit and phrases like ‘Apne mhoon miyaan mitthu‘ splashed across.

In between the main story arc of two friends, three item songs (one a STAR WARS set piece involving a very fit Princess Leia and an old Han Solo about the importance of physical fitness and another involving the ‘Price of Persia’ Dastan and his love Farah) and irritating gags are hammered at the audience. The gags involving a local Nautanki actor and some involving a poet played by Rajpal Yadav were totally, not funny. Rajpal Yadav is so over the top that some of his jokes were an absolute irritation. He clearly needs a break. Lara Dutta is so beautiful and SRK plays himself.

The problem with the movie is everybody is trying too hard when all they had to do was to let go just like Irfan Khan who makes the movie watchable and completely transforms into Billu in yet another moving performance – specially the scenes when he makes a call to the guest house and the one when he tells his wife why he can’t go and meet the superstar.

N.B: The word barber / hazaam has been beeped out throughout the movie because of some controversy. The result is a very annoying beep. Very annoying indeed.

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Tags: Billoo Barber, Billu, Billu Barber, Bollywood, Cinema, India, Irfan Khan, Lara Dutta, Movie review, Movies, Priyadarshan, Reviews, Shahrukh Khan