Director: Priyadarshan
Cast: Irrfan Khan, Lara Dutta, Shah Rukh Khan
Rating:


Priyadarshan decides to make (rather remake) another film. Perhaps his criterion for remake depends more on the ease of adaptability, over appeal in the original source. That leads to bland attempts like Billu .

Irrfan Khan is given the onus to act while Shah Rukh uses the attempt as a testimonial to himself. The curvaceous profiles of Deepika, Priyanka and Kareena are supposed to make up for the flatness of the plotline.

Billu (Irrfan Khan) finds it difficult to make ends meet by working as a barber (oops, is that a derogatory term? At least the multiple mute punches in the film imply so). He doesn’t earn enough to pay his children’s school fees or ensure daily bread for the family. He has less customers and more cash-crisis.

Abruptly enters Sahir Khan (Shah Rukh Khan), a Bollywood superstar who shoots for item songs while his film’s script is still being randomly written. The script is supposedly futuristic in genre but Sahir strangely insists on shooting it in a village. The unit ends up in Billu’s backyards.

Word spreads that Billu and Sahir were childhood friends following which the star-struck village lends liberal support to the poverty-stricken barber. Everyone from the village moneylender (Om Puri) to the school principal (Rasika Joshi) wants to have a glimpse of Sahir Khan through Billu. But Billu is too hesitant to approach Sahir due to the vast difference in their social status.

Priyadarshan and Mushtaq Sheikh take credits for the screenplay, though ironically they only snip out scenes from the original Malayalam film Katha Parayumpol . The retained portions are a frame-to-frame replica of the original film with no novelty. Nevertheless the storyline of the primary source in itself is one-dimensional throughout and only stressed and stretched on the barber’s starry influence with no twists or turns whatsoever.

One doesn’t expect the sensitivity of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Guddi with the film-inside-film setting. But the story is neither intricately woven around the film industry like in the recent Luck By Chance nor is the format entertainingly-exploited like in Shah Rukh’s own Om Shanti Om . All that the Bollywood backdrop does is make way for some superfluous item numbers or formulaic action sequences, unconnected to the core plot.

There are those regular glitches galore – like the village belle Lara Dutta is always decked up with eyeliners and lip-gloss though there’s no food for the family. The scenes shot in Sahir’s film hardly need a village setting. It’s never explained how the villagers know of Billu and Sahir’s friendship when Billu never makes it public. And perhaps the term barber and hajam sound offensive only when sung, since they are muted in songs but oddly retained in dialogues. What’s the logic? You don’t ask that question in a Priyadarshan film, even if it’s not his fault.

The director continues his brand of loud comedy though Manisha Korde’s figurative dialogues come to rescue at some instances. Finally the film attempts to reconcile its patchy plot with an emotionally driven climax but it only turns out to be an end of too much coincidence and convenience. However the culmination could still work for all those who get touched by the likes of Shah Rukh’s emotive outburst in Mohabbatien . The friendship between Billu and Sahir is never established throughout the film and only surfaces in the last scene. Some flashback account of their childhood companionship could have helped. Sadly after all this, the film doesn’t even end on a moral tone, though it had ample scope for it.

Irrfan Khan is aptly cast in the role of Billu and carries off his character effortlessly. But we have seen him play such roles so often that there remains no uniqueness in his act. Shah Rukh Khan has to just play himself which brings no challenge to his character. The onscreen and offscreen mass hysteria of his Southern prototypes, like Rajnikanth in Kuselan , is so colossal that SRK comes nowhere close in making his character ‘hero’ic. Rajpal Yadav, Om Puri and Asrani are so common to Priyadarshan films that it becomes difficult to differentiate them from their earlier works.

Reportedly, Priyadarshan plans to attempt a horror film next but the hair-raising effect has already started. That’s because you would rather want to skip visiting Billu barber’s parlour. This one’s certainly not worth letting your hair down.