Paa-pular demand

Random thoughts after watching Paa...

• Having read and heard reviews, I knew that contrary to popular belief, the movie was not going to be melodramatic at all. But I had no idea that it would be so funny.
  
  
• Abhishek Bachchan clean-shaven. WHEEE! Abhishek Bachchan with glasses. Double WHEEEE! Abhishek Bachchan as an honest politician. TRIPLE WHEEEE! I think I have forgiven him and am back to liking him.
  
  
• Jaya Bachchan reading out the opening credits was annoying as hell. She didn't look like she wanted to do it in the first place. Watch how she keeps rubbing her hands and fidgeting as she pretends to rattle off names from memory. It's like the AB Corp people thought, "We might as well find a way to stuff one more Bachchan into the movie." I'm just thankful they did not get Aishwarya Rai Bachchan to play Vidya Balan's part. Oh the horror.
  
  
• R. Balki seems to like the idea of Paresh Rawal finding himself in odd age-related situations with Amitabh Bachchan. While in Cheeni Kum, he was faced with a potential son-in-law who was older than him, in Paa he has a grandson who looks older than him.
  
  
• Balki also seems to like the idea of giving inappropriate nicknames to his characters. Well, at least Auro calling his grandma 'Bum' is not as bad as Amitabh Bachchan calling that annoying kid in Cheeni Kum 'Sexy'.
  
  
• Amitabh Bachchan effortlessly slips under Auro's skin, literally and otherwise. The make-up, the posture, the voice modulation. Simply terrific. There is absolutely no trace of the familiar "Rishte mein toh hum tumhaare..." baritone. I'm not surprised they said 'Introducing Amitabh Bachchan' in the opening credits.
  
  
• Okay, this is going to get a lot of brickbats but I have to say it. This is the only movie where I have liked Amitabh Bachchan. I mean, the make-up was so great that they could have gotten any good actor to play this role, but there’s something unexpected that Amitabh Bachchan brings to this role that I can’t really explain.
  
  
• Vidya Balan rocks rocks rocks every scene she is in.
  
  
• Who would have thought Paresh Rawal and Abhishek Bachchan could look so uncannily similar? They really did look like father and son, and it wasn't just the similar clothes.
  
  
• I'm still kinda mad at Illayaraja for recycling his own tunes in Cheeni Kum, so I didn't have high expectations. The music is ho-hum. The 'Udi udi' song is quite nice though.
  
  
• I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the whole politics angle between Amol and Jaikrit, and where it was supposed to go. I’m just happy that they did not pull a gimmick where the ‘sick kid’ magically solves all of his Dad’s problems seconds before dying.
  
  
• It was beautiful how Auro's progeria is shown to be totally incidental and not a pivotal point in the story. It could have been any kid.
  
  
• I loved the fact that the rona-dhona was confined to the last 15 minutes of the movie. The rest of the movie is a laugh-out-loud comedy. The dialogues are really funny. R. Balki knows how to hit the funny bone and make the best of each scene.
  
  
• Some of the best one-liners, apart from Auro's, were little Vishnu's. Watch out for the especially entertaining phone conversation between the two kids, which will have you laughing uncontrollably and trying to control it at the same time so you don't miss any of the lines. HILARIOUS.

Lately, Bollywood has been getting smart, getting mature and getting genuinely funny. Hmmmm... This year, I liked almost every movie I watched.

And that almost made me panic a bit.