Neha
Ghatpande
It was nice to sit in a
theatre packed to its full capacity to watch a Marathi film. But that was a
momentary pleasure. It was extremely disheartening to see the film drive
audience to react harshly after a point. Well, Baji, the first
Marathi superhero, has not only failed to impress but has also raised questions
such as why are we making these kind of films and for whom?
I can go on and on
about why Baji is a bad film but I would like to
focus more upon why Bajiremains to be a wasted opportunity. I say this because it
had everything- a good budget, great cast and a talented filmmaker. Still, it
fails on every ground.
The storyline is
simple. It is set in a village named Shrirangpur that has a vigilante, a saviour
named Baji.
Now, Baji is not one particular person but a
tradition of a family that is passed on to further generations. Chidvilas
(Shreyas Talpade) a naïve village boy belongs to this family but lacks the
instinct of a superhero. He is in love with his childhood friend Gauri (Amruta
Khanvilkar). Everything is going hunky dory when suddenly Martand (Jitendra
Joshi) realises that there is an ancient treasure buried in the village
somewhere. He becomes greedy and starts torturing the villagers and digging up
the entire village.
Well, well! Shrirangpur
is in trouble and desperately waiting for Baji to come back
and save them. If you ask me, I think Baji never
arrived!
Three major aspects
that mark Baji’s
failure are its length - nearly three hours, its atrocious music and seriously
bad writing. In an Indian context if you get these three aspects right, your
film is a hit. Period!
There are seven songs in the film and it becomes painful to sit through the narrative due to these musical disturbances. The music by Atif Afzal definitely scores a big zero.
Moving on to Dialogues
(written by Surhud Godbole) and the Screenplay (Nikhil Mahajan), they are
absolutely pointless. It seems Indian filmmakers have this idea that if you
throw lines like –‘Joaaplyaashi nadel,
to narkat sadel’ – you will become cool and filthy rich. Mind you, it
doesn’t work!
The dialogues are
childish; the screenplay is drab and at one point becomes unexplainable. Except
the rare comic scenes such as that of Baji explaining a
drunkard why he shouldn’t drink. These work thanks to Shreyas’s comic timing.
Mahajan has got his characters in place but with the proceedings, they just
lose their identity and start reacting unnaturally. Martand’s villainous
character turns extremely dark as the film progresses. Grave violence is used
to make the narrative impactful but one keeps wondering about how unnecessary
it is.
Also, Shreyas plays
three characters in this film namely the ancient Baji, the naïve
Chidvilas and the lookalike Akash who then becomes Baji. In all of
his roles, he plays Chidvilas the best as it demands comic timing, which he is
definitely good at. Both Jintendra and Shreyas have worked really hard to get
their bodies in shape but the poor writing does not back them. Amruta’s
character is frivolous; she somehow manages to fall in love with all three
characters played by Shreyas! The series of action sequences fail to engage and
become hilarious in the second half. It doesn’t have exceptional cinematography
either! Not to mention the absolute absence of editing.
m4m says: watch at your own risk
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