This Barfi! is colder than stone-cold Barf!

This Barfi! is colder than stone-cold Barf!

It’s a cold Turkey! Whatever it was a chaplinesque comedy? Poetic romance? Love between physically disabled couple? Or as itself declared in the movie “ek bakwaas jasoosi novel!” Doesn’t Move, doesn’t Engage, doesn’t Entertain! Frankly it does nothing in its never-ending running time.

Why do they make such films? Who story-boards them? Who and why mounts them, sanction them? Why do production houses back it? Why do actors get super-excited about these futile exercises to exhibit their acting skills?

It’s a woeful waste of great resources – the cast and crew included- in such self-indulgent exercises. Just pencilling in a couple of physically disabled characters doesn’t really qualify for great cinema. Barfi! for most part of it comes across as a contrived and manipulative effort, trying too hard to be too cute.

Dear Ranbir Kapoor, we have seen enough of your range as a powerhouse performer. Wake Up Sid, Rajneeti, Rocket Singh, Rockstar, Barfi!...phew! Yes, my friend, you are an actor par excellence, the new kid on the block, the most promising newcomer…and all that jazz! But it’s time we move beyond this audition show-reel of yours and get into some real movies. It’s time you emerge from the ‘most-promising’ category and actually deliver on those promises. Some real seeti-maar and in your Rockstar-lingo, some real palang-tod entertainment! The larger than life Khan-Akki-Devgn stuff. Or if that’s too much to ask for, atleast some frothy breezy romance of the Saif variety.

Ok, fair enough. Even if we take off the entertainment bit and start looking at Barfi! as an artisitic-beautiful work, it doesn’t really cut much ice (much Barf in this case). The direction is too flawed, and fails miserably in trying to be too intellectual, too layered. The director Anurag Basu continues to suffer from the ‘Kites’ hangover and assumes a back-and-forth narrative to be a great technique for great movies. It didn’t work for Kites. And it most definitely won’t for Barfi! either.

The thriller bit doesn’t work. The physical disability of the lead couple appears to be too force-fitted. And finally, the end-product is a confused exercise that seems to be based out of a neverland.  It goes from nowhere to nowhere. All the characters and situations come across as cardboard cut-outs, caricaturish. As if everyone out there was trying to impress (look I can act, look I can direct) rather than express.

Sorry, I can’t be a pseudo-intellectual and praise this so-called masterpiece, when I was dozing off throughout this yawn-inducing Barfi! Three thumbs down for this torture – for the movie, for the director and for myself for listening to fake glowing reviews!

The only redeeming feature – a superb ‘Picchar shuru!’ song at the start of the movie.