Heyy Baby starts off as a stag party movie, full of gross-out toilet humour and silly slapstick, presumably enjoyed by infantile men. The jokes are about backsides, farts, piddling and potty, dirty underwear and flying diapers and about sharing girlfriends, unwittingly or otherwise. But half an hour into the film and debutant director Sajid Khan packs in enough melodrama and polite humour to turn it into a one-size-fits-all film.
The premise might be inspired from Hollywood’s Three Men and a Baby but Heyy Baby is very desi at its core. A baby gets left outside the messy bachelor pad of Akshay, Fardeen and Riteish. None of them is willing to accept the kid as their own. They even make a list of former girlfriends to check if they hadn’t left any of them pregnant only to be told by the miffed girls that they never really were worthy of being fathers. Soon enough, they abandon the child in the rain, then within minutes they undergo a change of heart, go back to find the child has contracted acute pneumonia and the laughter makes way for tears. We even find religiosity getting into the frame with a Muslim Fardeen shown doing namaaz for the health of the kid.
The film is structured more like a series of scenes than one whole film. In fact, the first and second halves could be two entirely different movies with Vidya Balan making an entry with the intermission sign, signalling a change of track. From then on, it’s about the brief interlude of love in Vidya and Akshay’s past and the attempts to resolve the troubles in the relationship. The film is held together by a good act from Akshay Kumar who is surely emerging as the best comic star since Govinda with a fan following to rival the Khans. Vidya is irritating, over-the-top, extremely affected and looks ghastly in figure-hugging frocks. And Riteish surely deserves more than all those gay jokes targeted at his feminine looks. There are some interesting gags like the one inspired from Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Chupke Chupke with Fardeen replaying Dharmendra’s Botany professor Parimal Tripathi. But there again the toilet humour impinges. Why else should you play on the shuddh Hindi translation of piddling, ie mutra mukti!
High Fives
Bollywood
1. Heyy Baby
2. Chak De! India
3. Partner
4. Buddha Mar Gaya
5. Transformers (dubbed)
Hollywood
1. Superbad
2. The Bourne Ultimatum
3. Rush Hour 3
4. Mr Bean’s Holiday
5. War
Latino
1. El Cantante (Marc Anthony)
2. Todo Cambio (Camila)
3. El Regrso (Los Super Reyes)
4. Agarrese! (Grupo Montez)
5. K.O.B.: Live (Aventura)
Courtesy: Film Information
