Paa was one good movie that I have seen in a really long time. It is one of those movies that make you happy about having made a good choice in spending money.
It’s the story of a small boy with this serious condition of Progeria. Amitab has done a real justice to the role. His transformation to Auro is simply wonderful and the makeup really deserves a good applause. His body language, sound, everything shows the kind of effort that he has put into it. And it is a really memorable performance from Big B.
Vidya Balan shines as the brave and confident mother, who brings up her son all by herself. Actually the whole cast is good and the movies will be remembered for good acting.
The script is good and there are some really brilliant dialogues.
But the whole Politian act of Abhishek and those media stunts do look a bit weird and do not blend well with the rest of the movie. The kind of things that he does to regain his popularity and credibility do not look a bit original. That Doordarshan bit of the show fails to impress the audience as it would in the case of any real life politician in India. And the much publicised theme of progeria is not well developed. They could have cut the making-of-a-politian bit out and had given a bit more of importance to progeria.
The music is average. Ilayaraja’s reuse of his own tune (the famous Malayalam song Tumbi vaa ..) doesn’t sound as good. And the situation, according to me, is a bit too gloomy for a full-of-life tune like that.
The way the credits were shown is a welcome change. Jaya Bachan’s appearance there is quite pleasing and I liked the whole experiment.
And the whole story is showing the changing attitude of present day women towards life. Gone are the days when women used to wait eagerly for the Father-of-my-son and it is nice to see the change reflected in our movies. Vidya is one of those ‘choice mums’ and that part of the story was treated pretty well.
Only thing that I could not understand was why they decided to call this movie ‘Paa’. The whole story is about a boy who has a serious medical condition and is brought up by his wonderfully strong, affectionate, caring and loving mom. His dad does not even know about his existence for a long time. This man realizes that it is his son only towards the end of the movie. Alright, he does take the boy out on a trip. From what I could understand, the boy’s death came a bit faster because of his realization that his parents are not married. That fight in the school were ‘bastard’ was used, gives him a shock. All his attempts to see his parents together put a lot of strain on him both physically and mentally. I really couldn’t understand why they called the movie Paa after an irresponsible father, who is not up to a real challenge in life.
All said, Paa is a must watch. It has its share of fun filled moments and there is enough of emotion and tears.
