It’s the Big B through and through

Film: Bbuddah…Hoga Tera Baap

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Sonu Sood, Hema Malini, Raveena Tandon, Prakash Raj, Makarand Deshpande, Charmee Kaur

Written & directed by: Puri Jagannath

Rating: HHH

Folklore has it that wherever the Big B stands, the queue begins. It’s time to queue up for a film that reads like a running commentary on the Bachchan legend. Here, we get to see India’s most iconic and enduring screen-hero play a variation on all his most cherished roles.

And then some more. To the angry Vijay persona that the Big B created through those brilliantly-written films of SalimJaved in the 1970 and ‘80s, the actor, still sprightly enough to make all the bachcha-log of Bollywood look like performing midgets, adds dollops of wry cynicism that goes well with our times.

Make no mistake, Telugu cinema’s most successful director Puri Jagannath is not just a Bachchan fan. He’s also a master storyteller. To the mix ‘n’ match tale of an Angry Young Man’s journey into his advancing years of unrelenting lividness and self-mockery, Puri brings a crackling contemporary commitment to telling a story that has no room for humbug… only space for hectic hijinks.

The screenplay races through numbered days in the life of a Paris-returned gangster who is called back to Mumbai by another gangster with a serious concentration problem (Prakash Raj) to finish off a particularly troublesome cop (Sonu Sood).

It’s a skillfully written yarn that doesn’t stray into the yawn zone for even a second. Every character, even the relatively minor ones like Bachchan’s landlady who keeps jabbering to an unseen husband in Dubai, adds a sheen of zing to the shindig. The director actually manages to create a controlled atmosphere of plot development within the chaos of Mumbai’s streets.

Jagannath Puri displays a fabulous flair for the funny and the ferocious. The comic scenes contour the mega-star’s proclivity to laugh at himself and the self-important world around him comprising gangsters, collegians, cops and other on-the-move

Rathod) moves to the rhythm of the Big B’s super-controlled body language, creating for the assorted villains a kind of disembodied dynamism that we see in a far cruder avatar in the South, in the cinema of Rajnikanth.

Here, it is the Big B at work. The iconic super-hero manouvers through his tailormade role with devastating dexterity, leaving behind a trail of smoking guns, screaming tyres and satiated expectations that audiences had felt in the heydays of the Bachchan Raj.

The reign never ends. Buddah… offers a pleasurable romp into the star-power of the the subtle foxy flirtatiousness comes from the star and how much of it was there in the screenplay. urbanites. Vishal-Shekhar’s austerely-used music creates evolved rhythms for the Bachchan persona. You can’t miss the insistent beat.

Undoubtedly well-written and directed with sure-handedness that cannot hide Puri Jagannath’s boundless admiration for the Bachchan phenomenon, Bbuddah… is one of those garam-masala products that’s far cleverer than the outward flamboyance of the main character and execution suggest.

Cut through the blizzard of bravura that the Big B projects so insouciantly, and at heart this is an emotional father-son story. See how cleverly the director moves from a kind of italicised derringdo to a clamped emotional finale…. See how skillfully the other actors support the Big B’s towering presence. Prakash Raj as the arch-villain brings a sense of madness to the proceedings while Makarand Deshpande as a quiet gangster is glorious foil to the Big B’s repartees and rejoinders. Sonu Sood as the cop who keeps running into the old-young super-hero manages to hold his own in front of the Big B. And Raveena as the Big B’s besotted bombshell beloved from the past has herself a blast.

So do we. Right to the last frenetic shootout, we are with the director laughing cheering and saluting the star-power of this super-phenomenon named Amitabh Bachchan.

And when the Big B does a medley of all his old songs it’s time to forget that the ‘Bbuddah’ has just become a grand-baap all over again. Just get up and dance to the rhythm of the Big B’s star power. Don’t waste time watching the smut. Bbuddah is the past present and future of mainstream entertainment.

As for the action, the camera (Amol

Big B. The rapport that his character builds up through some lovely actresses of several generations (Hema Malini, Raveena Tandon, Sonal Chauhan, Charmee) is so robust and funny, you are left wondering how much of

Subhash K. Jha