*ing : Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Vidya Balan
Directed by : R. Balki

Nice Family drama

Paa is an engaging drama about Auro, a child who suffers from progeria that makes him age 4-5 times faster than normal. Fortunately the director R. Balki(of Cheeni Kum) has not gone in for educating us about the illness or showing us the difficulties faced by the ill-fated child. Instead, restrained writing with some dry wit thrown in makes for quite a decent viewing.

The film has some hiccups in the form of a few stretched out scenes, digressions from the script pertaining to media and politics and songs not having the required zing in them. But they are just a minor cavil in an otherwise light family drama.

A special mention for the character who is Auro’s classmate and constantly complains about his father. Watch out for the telephone conversation between Auro and him. It is hilarious.

Abhishek Bachchan pitches in a proper performance as the cool young politician(obviously a take on Rahul Gandhi) even though at times the sangfroid comes across as phony. Vidya Balan looks beautiful(I love this actress) and is completely engaging as Auro’s mother developing a strong chemistry with her on-screen son solely with the help of facial expressions. The soul of the movie is Amitabh Bachchan who proves once again why he is the power-house of acting as he disappears under all that prosthetic make-up and makes Auro his own.

Ladies, keep those tissues handy. The film is definitely not mass entertainment but a different story told in a simplistic way is a rarity in our industry and kudos to the makers to invest in this project. Good watch.

Rating : 3/5