Baby Review (Telugu Movie)
Ashwin Ram
Baby is a Telugu romantic flick with a twist. The film stars Anand Deverakonda, Vaishnavi Chaitanya, Viraj Ashwin in the lead roles.
Premise:
Anand Deverakonda and Vaishnavi Chaitanya have been in a serious relationship since their 10th grade. Vaishnavi joins college while Anand becomes an auto driver to look after his mom. The main story begins here due to the differences in their lifestyle.
Writing/ Direction:
Once the main conflict is revealed as a twist in the interval block, even the initial old-school love sequences start making sense. It’s a screenplay film, every scene moves the life of the three lead characters forward. For a film like this, audience engagement is the key and the director does the trick. The film might be many things, but it is gripping throughout and has that ‘what next’ factor which makes us forget the lengthy runtime, at least for the most part. The film is problematic at many places, might make one think life is stupid and even give a weird feeling about the people around. Although the writing at times exaggerates the happenings, it fits perfectly for the film language. Taking the two major writing parts of the story for example, the kissing scene in the interval and the one night stand portion in the latter. Both the sequences involve all three of them in a way or the other, however the moment is happening between two characters, the third character is fluently involved in the situation. It is idiotic to think about, but the factor is what makes those moments hard-hitting while watching. The crazy content obviously becomes sensational theatre material. The finale could have been crisper, as the film is long-drawn-out to convey its ending.
Performances:
Mixed bag performances from the two male lead artists. The heroine, Vaishnavi is significantly better than the main men, she shows great variety but she too misses the meter in a couple of places. Both Anand Deverakonda and Viraj Ashwin deliver a convincing act at places and there are a bunch of moments they miss out to express the intended emotion. Better finds would have uplifted the drama even more.
Technicalities:
A neat film in terms of technical aspects. There is nothing exceptional, but everything is at the right point. Decent songs, thankfully no duet considering the genre, all are montage numbers used as tools to quickly portray the situations. Fine work by the cinematographer and team, maintains the simplicity throughout that will easily connect with the audience. There are some smart cuts at the edit table, but the overall duration could have been easily shortened by chopping off the lags here and there.
Bottomlime
There are portions that the movie tends to be absolutely stupid and the main theme is problematic, but it is gripping from start to finish. And the happenings are crazy and never dips nor becomes a dry flick.
Baby - Insane!
Rating - 3/ 5