Cheeni Kum

I got to see Cheeni Kum yesterday. Went into the multiplex with buoyant expectations, for the movie has three of the finest actors in the film fraternity today – Big B, Tabu and Paresh Rawal. Also, the movie is directed by Balki (R. Balakrishnan), the advertising guru. I happened to see Balki for the first time on television as a guest in Barkha Dutt’s ‘We the people’ few years back. I was floored by his persona. He, along with, Prasoon Joshi and Piyush Pandey have to be few of the most creative and multi-talented people in the country – Prasoon Joshi for sure.

Back to the movie. The core underlying theme of the movie, of that of a relationship between a 64-year young man and 34-year old woman, was handled well. The movie is subtle and the dialogues are really classy. Loved many of them. The first half of the movie was excellent where love blossoms between the two. However, I thought the film lost a bit of its focus in second half. The movie dragged into some bit of melodramatic stuff and lost its finesse.

There is no real take-away theme in the movie, except perhaps that aging has nothing to do with the number of years of living. I guess it is made for a pure entertainment value for the 2hrs 15mins it spans out for. The climax scene per se, where AB comes to know about the baby’s death and becomes desperate and guilty that he did not pray for her, was good but was not converted to a classic by AB. There was something missing in the scene as far as the enactment was concerned.

Frankly, the movie fell short of my expectations. Could not go home with a good ‘after-taste’ of the movie. I felt there were voids at many places in the movie. I cannot point out instances where I felt so, but there was a sense of incompleteness somewhere.

In terms of performances, Big B is brilliant, as usual. But I have to say that Tabu is exemplary. To my mind, she has over-shadowed Big B in this movie, and by a distance perhaps. Paresh Rawal (as Tabu’s father) and Zohra Sehgal (as AB’s mother) were excellent too.

The character of Sexy (the baby) is portrayed brilliantly by Swini Khara. She is terrific and supremely confident as an actor. This movie would have lost a lot of charm without her. She was really too good…

The movie is worth watching for the superb performances, if not for anything else.

By the way, I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that there was no kissing scene between AB and Tabu – a serious deviation from the trend these days.