Baby John's Formulaic Heroism Leaves Us With A Hollow Tale

This week, Varun Dhawan ventures into Kerala's backwaters to become an action hero in the season of cross-pollination between Bollywood and South Indian cinema. The title, common in God's Own Country, plays on the character's arc and the actor's image. Baby John is essentially a scene-by-scene reenactment of Atlee's Theri, fueled by Vijay's fame. It tells the classic tale of a mouse who was once a tiger and is waiting to roar once more. One example is Baby John. 

Nothing fits. The action is unimaginative, the sound mix is disorganized, the star power is off, the timing is terrible, and the 164 minutes of out-of-date narrative clichés and the money shots aren't consistent. Boom or bust is the genre's defining characteristic. Filmmaking is high-risk, high reward, and high-everything.

Simply put, Baby John lacks a spindle strong enough to support the weight of the unconscionable excess that the exercise releases. Although the Bollywood actor is prepared for the performance, the turgid show in which he puts all of his efforts lacks the substance necessary to withstand the masala-laden flab that swiftly forms around the film's central plot. Baby John is a clumsy, tenacious, and utterly fragmented film that seeks inspiration in the wrong places.

Premise of the movie 

The slapdash attempt, which is a remake of the 2016 Tamil blockbuster Theri, only produces dreadfully stale schtick and a turgid mess that veers from one clumsy idea to another without any redeeming qualities or originality. A psychopathic villain (who goes by the name Babbar Sher, which means "mighty lion"), a peacenik supercop ("good vibes only," he says repeatedly), and a bright, motherless child who is the object of the latter's affection are the main characters of the movie.

What's new, then? Baby John is produced by Atlee, the director of Theri. However, Kalees, the author and director of the Hindi rehash that adheres to the original script, is unable to determine the percentage that he obtained from the original Vijay-led mass entertainer.  Let's dive deeper into the nuances of the film.

Half-Baked Characters and Superficial Storyline

Baby John feels like just another action movie looking for relevance because there isn't much originality in the mix and the fight scenes and shootouts are blatantly outdated. The narrative alternates between flashbacks set in Mumbai, where the hero enjoys celebrity status due to his crime-busting record, and the present. 

In Baby John, the villain is also given sermons by the hero and his five-year-old child. Not to mention, Satya is seen fighting while mounted in the climax. "Herogiri kayaam rehni chahiye!" (Heroism should always be present) Salman Khan makes a dramatic debut as Agent Bhai Jaan while you're still processing everything you've seen over the past two hours. 

In addition to attempting some action stunts that are worthy of a whistle, he uniquely delivers his jokes. But his conversation with Varun Dhawan, in which the latter asks him why he chose to become a parent, is very open. The scene also reveals the close relationship between the two actors.

As mentioned earlier, Atlee's style is consistent throughout the film, and there are scenes—like Varun Dhawan's portrayal of a police officer, the pigeons flying during the hero's entrance, or the main couple's love song—where you feel as though you're watching a different Jawan. The original film's makers don't seem to realize how much the world has evolved since it was first released eight years ago. Some of the dialogue and scenes are illogically humorous because they are accurate translations of the Tamil film. For instance, Satya tells Meera that she is not just his wife but also his mother!

A stale take on the unserious and hilarious portrayal of stereotypical heroism

Regarding all the violence that Baby John forces on us, while there is undoubtedly plenty of fire in the movie, it lacks real power because nothing it offers can surprise the viewer. Thus, the actors are limited in what they can do, indulging in the same stereotypes of alpla men and damsels in distress.

Although she has inherited her father's feistiness, Satya, who is currently living covertly in Alappuzha, Kerala, as a regular bakery owner, has given up his previous strategies for dealing with offenders. The screenplay allows for a scene where the hero turns on a song on his car's audio system and promises his mother (Sheeba Chaddha) that he will take on a gangster and his men in the middle of Mumbai traffic and return before the song ends, demonstrating how much of an action-oriented man the crusading cop is. 

He accomplishes that without exerting much effort. Baby John becomes a cheap and exploitative rape-revenge thriller that portrays men as the ones most impacted by such horrible crimes when he meets a disgusting politician-gangster named Babbar Sher (Jackie Shroff). After leaving the flashback, it becomes a warped vigilante thriller. The film must conclude with a slate that reads, "dedicated to all fathers."

It is not enough that two men, one of whom is Ram Sevak (Rajpal Yadav), deliver preachy monologues about the perils of being a woman in this nation. 

The issue with films like Baby John is that, like most Indian mass entertainment, they hide the formula's weakness and fill in the gaps with star power. Fan service and on-screen presence are meant to be the primary draws; the others are merely token social-drama fillers. This movie doesn't recognize or capitalize on his strengths.

Instead, it is designed to draw attention to the dazzling gravity of a charismatic and star-studded presence. There is a serious mismatch because mass hero Satya Verma appears to be a parody of the real one. As a result, this movie is still unsure of how to present him. There is nowhere to hide for an outrageously out-of-date story without the shield of superstardom, so the outcome is more Baby than John.  

Views expressed by the author are their own.