Click to play videoCast: Akshay Kumar, Fardeen Khan, Ritesh Deshmukh, Vidya Balan
Direction: Sajid Khan
Actor-funnyman Sajid Khan turns director with this week's Heyy Babyy, a film centred around three promiscuous friends in Sydney who lead the kind of decadent lifestyle that would put even Casanova to shame.
They'll sleep with anything in a skirt and wake up the next morning not remembering even the name of the lady lying naked beside them.
One morning they land up with a different kind of house-guest, a little baby girl who's been left at their doorstep with an anonymous note saying this child belongs to one of them and they ought to take care of her.
The baby, of course, turns out to be quite the handful, needing constant attention from the boys.
Frustrated at first, the boys eventually fall in love with the little one, and before long she becomes the apple of their eye, the focus of their undivided affection.
But every Hindi film needs conflict for the story to progress, and in this film, conflict shows up in the form of the baby's real parent who snatches her out of the hands of our three heroes and takes her back home where she rightly belongs. Our heroes are heartbroken, they want their baby back.
It's a pity that in his role as a filmmaker, Sajid Khan falls into the same trap that he used to so hilariously expose when he was discussing old Hindi films on television.
Heyy Babyy tries to pack in too many things all at once, and Sajid Khan doesn't know just when to end the joke.
Which is perhaps what explains the string of shit and piss and fart jokes that the first forty minutes of the film are filled with. Once you've come to terms with the fact that this is pavement humour of the very crudest kind, then you might actually find yourself laughing at some of the gags.
Like that one involving a dirty diaper which comes flying across the room towards two of our protagonists.
My only point of argument here is that this is clearly a film they're aiming at young kids and family audiences. In which case, the repeated sex jokes and gay jokes are entirely inappropriate.
Like that scene in the film's first half when Akshay Kumar goes to the supermarket to buy baby food and ends up using all these double-meaning words and gestures to make his point - I'm not sure how many parents will be comfortable watching such things with their kids.
I didn't know Sajid Khan was one for melodrama, he's always made jokes about actors who ham, which is why I was surprised to find once again, that he's guilty of committing the same crime in his own film.
Heyy Babyy goes from gross comedy to over-the-top drama and that's the film's biggest failing. I can understand Akshay Kumar, Fardeen Khan and Ritesh Deshmukh are upset that the baby's been taken away by her real mother, but their obsession over the baby comes off as both contrived and melodramatic. It all looks very fake.
The final straw comes in the form of Vidya Balan who plays the baby's real mum as a sort of Cruella de Ville character.
Vidya is cold and distant and doesn't even pretend to care for the baby. What's worse, the director tugs at your heart strings with scenes that make you cringe.
Like that blatantly manipulative one in which they show the baby being poked by a syringe and then pumped to life in the hospital. Or even the one in which one character's shown doing an impromptu namaaz to pray for the baby's life. Sajid, what were you thinking?
Armed with a better script, there's no doubt Sajid Khan might have delivered a better film. I say that because it's clear he knows technique and he can direct his actors. The film is funny in parts, how you wish the writing was sharper.
There's a line in the film which explains how the baby's changed our heroes' lives. Ritesh says, "We were once hot dudes, but aaj kal hum doodh ko hot karte hain." Honestly you don't expect such corny lines even in a class seven school play.
Of the actors, Fardeen Khan is embarrassingly incompetent, he hams so hard, you want to send him back to acting school. Ritesh Deshmukh pulls many faces and raises a few laughs, but Vidya Balan sticks out like a sore thumb.
Her wardrobe, her make-up, her hair - if I didn't know better I'd assume her staff had conspired against her for not paying their salaries on time.
Of the lot, it's Akshay Kumar who holds together the film with his perfect comic timing, he is easily the film's biggest strength.
In the end, Heyy Babyy is like those 80s-style family entertainers, there's a little bit of comedy, a little bit of romance and heaps of emotional drama.
You know exactly where the story's going, but you go along for the ride anyway. I'm going to go with two out of five for Sajid Khan's Heyy Babyy, it's not a bad film but you certainly expected better.
Meanwhile my heart goes out to that little baby, probably scarred for life from hearing all those dirty jokes being cracked around her.
Rating: 2/5
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