The Hindu : New Delhi News : Three men and a baby rock the theatres this week Cinema

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Sunday, Aug 26, 2007
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New Delhi

Three men and a baby rock the theatres this week Cinema

JEST A MINUTE: The week offers some borrowed laughs as in “Heyy Babyy”, and some genuine ones, as offered by “Ratatouille”.

HEYY BABYY

(At Golcha and other Delhi theatres)

For years Sajid Khan has made a happy living scoffing at cut-copy-paste filmmakers. His ready wit and unaffected humour have evoked smiles for long. Now the times have changed! Welcome to the league, Mr. Khan! Welcome to the fraternity of “inspired” filmmakers. Unlike the more intrepid filmmakers like David Dhawan, who is said to have lifted “Hitch”, Khan plays it safe. He goes back in time to about 20 years ago, does a bit of shoplifting, and comes back with “Heyy Babyy” – maybe the extra ‘y’ in both words is Khan’s idea of originality. The film is clearly “inspired” by “Three Men and a Baby”, a 1980s film that tickled many and was itself inspired by a French film.

Lifting an old film is not the only thing Sajid Khan does in the name of playing safe: he takes the trustworthy Akshay Kumar in a role he can do in his sleep. Akshay, living in a bachelors’ pad, plays a father to a baby somebody had left at his doorstep. Add constant comic interjections between Akshay and his mates, Riteish Deshmukh and Fardeen Khan, and you know Khan is close to Priyadarshan-Dhawan territory.

Sajid Khan does not feel safe enough. So he brings in Shah Rukh Khan in a cameo. He gets lots of whistles, maybe more than the combined tally of the three heroes. And just to have that extra cushion, the director brings in old suspects Boman Irani and Anupam Kher, each in a role he would have forgotten before the film’s release. While Irani plays father to Vidya Balan – yes, Ms. Thousand Watt Smile is there too with some conceit, some grace – scandalously screechy Kher appears out of the blue as Shah Rukh’s dad! And disappears just as suddenly.

All that for insurance, but does the film work? Well, for a good part it does. The jokes among the three guys saddled with the responsibility of bringing up a baby work among the masses. Deliberately loud, once in a while outrageously so, the chemistry among the guys is quite electric. The masses love the easy repartee of Akshay which forces even Fardeen and Riteish to occasionally shed their cloak of mediocrity. The guys may not be able to decide whose baby it is at their doorstep, but they take turns playing modern dads, even showing their tender side. In between come those bouts of street humour and disconcerting loo jokes.

That is until the time Akshay reveals it is his baby after all! Yawn! Bring in time machine in reverse and we the poor viewers go from Sydney – where the film is largely based – to Delhi, and that one moment of weakness when Akshay met Vidya! Yawn some more. We have seen that since the “Aradhana” days. Remember that good old song “Roop tera mastana…bhool koi humse naa ho jaye…”? Well, following that “bhool” we are beginning to creak with all the effort.

For all the inspired effort, “Heyy Babyy” could have been a nice, breezy comedy had it been edited better. Sajid did not need to drag in those many bachelor sequences. He needed to style his characters better, maybe he needed a dash of individuality for each of his heroes. The way they talk, walk, act, it seems they are the first generation of human clones. No idiosyncrasies, no personality marks, just like trees in the woods. The film suffers from lack of pace and novelty, and the jokes too get repetitive: most of them having already been shown in the promos! Should you spend your money on this tale of a baby with three fathers and a missing mother who shows up at just the right time? Not yours. But if a friend is in a generous mood, take the offer gracefully, smile along. For years Sajid Khan has laughed at people, now you can laugh at him, with him.

RATATOUILLE

(At PVR Saket and other Delhi theatres)

It is not quite “Finding Nemo” but Brad Bird’s “Ratatouille” is as human, as emotionally laden a saga as one can get in the world of toon heroes. Pixar’s latest relies as much on the emotion quotient as the animation wizardry. Of course, all this is quite a world removed from the toon stories so far: rats here are not furry aberrations or little villains, sneaking up and down the kitchen drain pipe. It is centre-stage time for rats! Neve r mind, they may not be many people’s idea of a companion at any place, least of all a restaurant. But on such an unlikely premise Bird spins together a gripping story of a rat, Remy, who wants to be a chef! Not only does he love food, but he also wants to try his hand at preparing it! That too alongside humans! This ambition is full of pitfalls: there is danger to his life, there is danger to all around. Under such circumstances, he gets help from unlikely quarters: a little boy in a garbage dump who has just been fired from an upmarket French restaurant. The two strike an unusual friendship, and thereby comes the moral lesson of the film: together through thick and thin, and you might as well as be at your destination than journeying all life long. Amazing how Hollywood, which seems to take adults as devoid of emotions, leave alone moral uprightness, seems to deem it necessary to say all the right things to kids!

With able voiceovers by the likes of Patton Oswalt, Brad Garrett and Brian Dennehy, the film has that abiding happy feeling. It transmits pure joy, and does not ask too many uneasy questions. The pace is good, and the rat movements quite likeable, which is saying a lot, considering the animal is regarded as nothing more than a little menace!

The dialogue is pithy and witty without being too preachy. In short, “Ratatouille” is a nice little journey, just the kind of offering to turn a Sunday afternoon a shade richer. Rat’s day out may just mean your family’s day out too!

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