Refreshing But Flawed...

Barfi, the latest endeavour of the talented Anurag Basu is both impressive and disappointing at the same time. I did go in with some high expectations given the reputation of the director and the hype surrounding the film and honestly I am not too amazed with this happy go lucky story of a deaf & mute Darjeeling boy. The story however adopts an unfamiliar path for a Bollywood film al right but in the end suffers for taking itself too seriously. Basu tries to tell a simple story of some simple people but unnecessarily complicates things by incorporating unrelated sub-plots.

Now Basu deserves some praise though for capturing the beautiful Darjeeling on Screen. The film is exclusively shot in Calcutta and Darjeeling and truly it is a visual treat. It is able to tag the nostalgic feeling with the story but unfortunately that is not the only cognitive feeling we are exposed to. The story also exerts a feeling of deja-vu and that is purely because the director has copied too many Hollywood stuff. I mean the comic portions are direct rip off from numerous Charlie Chaplin films, the two love stories in each half are heavily influenced from The NoteBook and our very own Koshish. Whereas the kidnap plot has an uncanny similarity with Gone Baby Gone and so on. But what really disappointed me is the background score. They just lifted it from Amelie.



Despite all these copy paste act by the director, the film works only because of some great performances from the lead. Priyanka Chopra is superb and Ranbir gives a mature performance as Barfi. Now I admit Barfi is not the most honest work by the director but none the less it is a decently good film to watch.
I am going with 6 out of 10 for Barfi, but given the fact that this is our official entry to Oscars I really think the Juries desperately need an IQ check.