Earthy and Unpretentious. Review on Billu Movie

Billu is not a path breaking ‘intelligent’ movie, nor is it a masala potboiler. It is just a simple story simply told. Watching Billu is like floating on a boat while enjoying the fresh breeze and the occasional spray of water on your face.

Billu (Irfan Khan) is a poor barber who lives in a small village with his wife (Lara Datta) and two kids. He is a humble but highly principled man who endures his poverty with dignity and a dry sense of humour. His life changes suddenly when Sahir Khan (SRK), a movie superstar, comes to his village for a film shoot. Sahir and Billu used to be school friends but had lost touch many years ago. The word gets out the Billu is Sahir’s friend and all of a sudden Billu becomes the most revered person in the village. People start doing him favours, his decrepit small shop starts getting lots of customers, everybody wants to be his friend in the hope that he will help them meet Sahir. Billu is bewildered with this unwanted attention. He fears that Sahir may not remember him and hence, does not want to contact him. Urged by his wife and demanding kids, he agrees to go to Sahir but all his attempts to get through Sahir’s Z-grade security prove futile. In the meantime, the villagers get impatient with Billu’s dilly-dallying and accuse him of being a fraud. Don’t want to give the rest away.

For me Priyadarshan has always been a director who showed his best potential in serious subjects like Kalapani, Viraasat and Gardish. But he prefers making comedy movies filled with more characters than one can count. Some of them have been quite good and some quite idiotic. In Billu he brings together both the serious & comic elements, and also adds his sensitive touch. The result is sweet and heartwarming, but also a bit dragging at times.

The main reason the movie appeals is the characters are real and identifiable. Irfan does not play Billu, he becomes Billu. His eyes (oh my God those eyes!) show vulnerability, dignity, bewilderment, emotional turmoil…..everything. Your heart smiles when he smiles, and goes out to him when he is down. SRK brings in the glamour element and most of the time stays in the background. Billu earthiness and Sahir’s flamboyance are complete opposites, yet it was not difficult to imagine them as friends – the sensitivity in both their eyes is the same. SRK does his bit well but I felt he was not his usual self in this movie, the charm was somewhat missing. Lara Datta is good as the supportive yet demanding wife. The kids who play Billu’s son and daughter are excellent. The rest of the cast consists of Priyadarshan regulars and they are all competent specially Om Puri, Asrani and Rajpal Yadav.

The promos suggested a movie filled with item songs but thankfully they are just used to establish Sahir’s identity or to take the movie forward and don’t seem like intrusions. The music is nice, so is the choreography. The cinematography is brilliant, the fresh beauty of the village is very well captured. The art director has also done a very good job. Dialogues are another high point of the movie. Editing is just about okay, I specially felt establishing Billu and Sahir’s characters took too long. The end of the movie was good but could have been better.

My Final Take -Billu did not make me go WOW! But it was a very pleasant experience.