Paa is like old wine in a new bottle. The story reminds you of classics like "Masoom", "Kaash" and "Anjali" and the more recent average-fare "Jab Pyaar Kisise Hota Hai". But hey, who’s worried about the story nowadays? For the viewer, its boiling down to whether you get your money’s worth or not. It has become difficult to expect anything new from Hindi cinema nowadays, as it evolves and continues to revolve around the basic formula that’s being followed since ages: 4 songs, 2 fights(wherever possible!), etc. Minor variations to the formula keep taking place, but rarely do we see films which break away from it, like "A Wednesday".Abbas Tyrewala proved the story isn’t so important as long as the screenplay, dialogues and direction entertain the viewers and involve them with the characters. So, thats what everyone, including legendary film-makers like Rajkumar Santoshi, is trying to do. But Balki, I didn’t expect this from you!
Looks like Balki watched the above mentioned movies and next day, got a brilliantly "gimmicky" idea of casting real life father and son as reel life son and father. How can we do that, he thought? A few minutes into Google, he found all about a disease called Progeria. Eureka! Paa was born! Balki found the USP of his film, and created the story to fit the needs i.e. to show Abhishek as father and Amitabh as son. The premise was interesting enough to pull the audience, even if the story or the film wasn’t. And the plan seems to have worked very well!
Ok, so after all the Balki-bashing, how is Paa really? Relatively speaking, one really can’t compare it to "Anjali" or the other films. Those are classics, while this one’s a "gimmick". Balki is very clever marketer. He hides the weaknesses in the script and lack of plot by giving us Amitabh Bachchan in a new avatar. Its a very clever distraction tactic, and it works to an extent.
Amitabh is unrecognisable and unless the film-makers mentioned it, we wouldn’t have known it was him! That would’ve been fun, but they made such a big hype about it that some of the fun is lost. Even then, he does an outstanding job, and proves that apart from Aamir Khan, no one comes close to him when it comes to versatility. He puts his heart and soul into the role and it shows in the way he performs. Not much is known about Progeria, hence its difficult to compare his character with reality, but he seems real smart for a kid with Progeria. And so do the other kids. One thing I loved about the film is how the kids get to speak the most meaningful and thought-provoking dialogues. Kudos to Balki for showing the innonence and intelligence of kids thru’ such dialogues, apart from the superb introduction scene where Abhishek goes thru’ the entries for "Visionary of India" award. Each creation was brilliant and if it was really made by children, they alone deserve a big round of applause.
Apart from him, Vidya Balan does a wonderful job as Auro’s mother and shows lot of determination and courage. She is a new-age woman who doesn’t mind in giving birth and raising kid without being married. It kind of reflects on the women of today, who are completely different from the women of yesterday as far as culture and values are concerned. They are not necessarily smarter, but bolder and ready to take risks in life. She looks very beautiful in sarees, but I wonder how many women wear sarees in places like Lucknow.
Abhishek Bachchan looks cool in his Sachin Pilot inspired look, but his character isn’t well-defined. Infact, you feel dumb when his character, initially shown as a super-busy, go getter kind of politician who doesn’t even have time for his father, becomes docile and son-centric after he comes to know that he is Auro’s dad. Looks like he forgot politics when he saw his kid! Also, his media-bashing and political rivalry track stands out like a sore thumb and has no place in a story like this. Wonder why Balki thought of spending precious time over these matters instead of focusing on the father-son relationship. Not sure about others, but atleast I expected that to form the crux of the story. However, that gets hardly 20-30 minutes of screen time.
Paresh Rawal needn’t have accepted this five-minute role which has little or nothing for him. He zips in and out of scenes without leaving much impact. Infact, I wonder if his role was needed at all.
Balki makes his characters shed a lot of tears and while it makes us moist-eyed, its not the best way to create touching scenes. Its kind of manipulative and safe-approach to ensure that audience feels for the character. Its hard to see any character die, and when you dedicate the last 15 minutes for that alone, it feels quite overdone. Auro’s intention to get his parents together is commendable but the method adopted by him feels artificial and quite ridiculous. Also, like conventional movies, Auro dies after completing all the important dialogues, which also feels very cliched.
Also, as other reviewers have pointed out, the story has a kind of fairy-tale, "this can’t happen in real life" feel to it. It doesn’t present the true picture of progeria patients or their families, and that is one of its weaknesses. Though a lot of hard work has gone into Amitabhs make up, the film’s attitude towards the disease seemsquite casual.
Screenplay(Balki) and editing(Anil Naidu) needed to be tighter and the film should’ve wrapped up in 1.5 hours by chopping out Abhishek’s political discussions, media-bashing, Paresh Rawal’s character and the climax. Also, its weird why Anil has wasted reels shown cars moving around here and there. The scene of car moving into Auro’s house has been shown some 10-12 times. Multiply that by 5 seconds per scene, that itself is a minute wasted.
Dialogues, by Balki himself, are one of the strong points of the film. Its quite amazing to see how he has managed to infuse satire into Auro’s dialogues and a fair degree of frankness and freshness in the other’s dialogues. I chuckled when Auro asks his mother "What is this donkey doing with you?", when she shows a photo of her with his Paa.
Illayarajja proves that he still has the goods to deliver for a big film like this. The music is different and hummable. His background score is very nice too, though it feels quite intrusive in some scenes due to overuse of violins. I love the theme song which plays at Auro’s entry and the end of the film.
Cinematography is not one of the great things about Paa, despite the presence of expert like P C Sreeram. Its quite ordinary and unimaginative except for the picturisation of the song "Mudi Mudi" which appears at the beginning ofthe film.
All in all, Paa leaves one with mixed feelings because a lot of hard work has gone into its making, a lot of experts have pooled in their efforts, yet the result isn’t as satisfying as it should’ve been. Its not straight from the heart. Its mostly formulaic and gimmicky, and that takes away most of the charm and emotional depth that it could’ve had.