Ban This Bagh!. Review on Baghban

Baghban – a highly over dramatic (non)family film with very few khushis and lots of ghams. There are plenty of negative vibes running in the undercurrent of this very much avoidable family drama, leaving you in a bad taste, until the last 15 minutes of climax which are again overloaded with loads & loads of bullsh*t in the name of emotions.

Baghban is yet another addition in the huge list of stereotype Bollywood flicks which are full of outlandish characters and without an appropriate story. I don’t know in which age Baghban’s director is living to have made a movie like this.

What I like about Baghban is the concept. Many children in the humdrum business of their daily lives forget that they owe something to their parents. Not all but many do! Baghban is about such children who after growing up become so self-centered and selfish that they start considering their parents as an unwanted liability. A memorable film could have been made out of this wonderful concept, which could have served as a grim reminder to all such spoilt brats.

But the “Typical Bollywood” treatment spoiled the whole essence of the movie. There were no-real life characters, no real-life situations and it all seemed so damn dramatic that it started to nauseate after a point of time.

The characters of Amitabh, Hema, Salman and Mahima are full of white. While the children and daughter-in-laws of Amitabh are full of black. My question is why always black and white? Where are the grey shades? In real life there are hardly any black and white characters, we all have our own share of grey shades which are missing in this flick and which could be found in say a movie like Saransh.

In real middle classes families, this doesn’t hold good. Would you ask your dad to get up from the dining table while he is having dinner? Or would you ask your mom to sleep in the servant quarters? That’s the problem of this movie – overdoing everything to make a strong point, which sadly backfired and made everything look so artificial. In stead if they could keep it natural with real life situations and real life characters the movie could have been an evergreen one.

Why superstars like Amitabh and Hema and why not artists like Naseerudin and Shabana? Why the needless songs and dances? Why an attempt to portray children as villains? Why doesn’t the movie show both sides of the coin?

Life is changing now. With growing competition it’s becoming fast paced. It isn’t as slow and leisurely as it used to be. So, there is a constant pressure on the children as well. Deadlines, workload, office politics, late hours and with all this it’s next to impossible to be the mama’s boy or papa’s girl like they used to be before.

But however, this doesn’t mean that the parents should be neglected. The hand which, held you in your first steps in life, should get your support during their last steps. A balance needs to be maintained with some empathy from both the parties.

All in all Baghban fails and fails big time to get the message across. Poor show!