Bbuddhah Hoga Tera Baap opens with the iconic AB poster from Deewar silhouetted against the credits and those who grew up in that era, instantly feel the rush of blood going to their head. There was nothing, NOTHING like watching Amitabh Bachchan in 70 mm or Cinemascope, in the 70s and 80s, in flesh and blood almost, as he crossed those never-ending legs in defiance to say, “Tum log mujhe bahar dhoond rahe the aur main yahan tumhara intezaar kar raha hoon,” and staggered out of the godown after having pulped the unfortunate Peter and his cronies, to crumble near a tap for a drink.
There was a sense of purpose about Vijay when he took on the Peters and the Tejas of the world. And he never had to ripple out of his shirt to look like a contender. He was one inside and out. Seething with righteous anger in not just raw fight sequences but in rasping monologues, dying breaths and yet there was such a sense of joy when he walked into a frame. And you didn’t really know why this surge of something inexplicably vital ran through your veins when he in that silk sherwani and pink pagdi, crooned,”toh lo bhaiyya hum apne pairon ke oopar khade ho gaye..aur mila li hai taal…”
Or when he shook his lighted backside into the camera to the pulse of Saara Zamana or walked down the stairs in a cool suit in Don, clapping and locking eyes for the first time with Zeenat Aman. Or danced his head off for a Banarsi paan.
He just filled up the hall and your senses. A lot has changed since then. He has changed a lot too but make no mistake, that slo-mo walk in a flowered suit can still knock your socks off. Though now, he and his besotted director Puri Jagannath feel the need to remind a new generation how he became the baap of all superstardom cliches. And it is when he sings a few of his hits in a cool remixed version (played often at his concerts), that you suddenly realise the irony of the moment.
On a Friday when a film, supposedly about the youth of today is using as multiple hooks, expletives, an upset stomach and the item number by a superstar uncle, here is a man in his 70s still in the running for a whistle, a clap, a laugh, a hit or even just a nostalgic smile. Because lets face it. AB is already the longest running ‘lambi race ka ghoda’ (as Iftekhar rightly predicted in Deewar). Now it is upto the rest of the young kids and the middle aged superstars he mocks in this film to catch up with him.
Bbuddah Hoga Tera Baap is an unabashed tribute to the star who has spent the last one decade or so proving that he can be less than Amitabh Bachchan. That he can be an ill-researched Alzheimer patient. A nine year old child or was it 12? A sentimental husband helplessly longing for his wife. A woefully bad version of Gabbar. A boring patriarch.
This film celebrates the hero he was. The man who tells people shorter than him to stand on a stool to talk to him. The man who can swat villains like flies, out dance and out talk and out punch anyone and still make a woman, 20 years younger than him, long for him like a teenager and sprint to the kitchen to make his favourite baingan ka bharta. There are the inside Bachchan jokes like when he says, he is the founder of the Mumbai mafia, has walked its monsoons and has done EVERYTHING that the others are now trying to copy.
So this is not a film where he is caricaturing his best years but showing that he is not done yet because ladies and gentlemen he can still play a baddie and a saviour, flirt with his estranged wife (Hema Malini in a vintage Naseeb moment, crying her eyes out over a man she can never get over), watch over his son, walk into a den and clean it up with a flurry of well-timed bullets.
And who in God’s name, he seems to be asking, can carry off suits made out of silk curtains and sofa upholstery along with multiple pairs of dandy shoes, mismatched scarves, a leather clad biker avatar and rainbow shades but me in my 70s? Beep beep, as he says in the film, to all those who think, I am too old for this business.
When Bachchan is sentimental in the film, he runs on the beach like Urmila only with more clothes on and then sits on the rocks and smiles wistfully. It is when the camera travels from his striding shoes to his trousers to his lapels to his face, that you grin. Because suddenly, you remember a lost era when stardom was not about what could be seen but by what you felt.
Prakash Raj is Bachchan’s worthy, solidly evil and charismatic adversary as he barks orders, slaps minions around and fills the limited screen time he is accorded, with memorable grimaces. The fantastic looking and hugely talented Sonu Sood has great fun reprising the younger Bachchan and there is the hyperventilating Raveena Tandon having an out-of-body experience every time she sees her Viju, a pretty Sonal Chauhan and an assorted cast of non essentials in what is essentially a vanity exercise. That somehow turns out to be an enjoyable ride because the man at the centre of it can still bring the house down with just a one-liner. And can crack a joke and a villain’s composure better than anyone else.
Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/b/books/perfect-eight-reema-moudgil-book-9380032870?affid=unboxedwri )