Piku (2015)

Director: Shoojit Sircar

Story: Juhi Chaturvedi

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, Irrfan Khan

Music: Anupam Roy

Time: 122 minutes

Bottom-line: Hilarious all the way… Amitabh in fine form!

Earning his fourth National Award for Best Actor, Big B finds himself in superb form yet again, in this comedy drama, Piku. The film features Deepika Padukone (who won her second Filmfare award for Best Actress) and Irrfan Khan in the lead roles, with Balendra Singh in the supporting role.

Piku Banerjee (Padukone) is a Bengali architect living in Delhi, with her 70-year-old father, Bhaskor (Bachchan). Bhaskor has chronic constipation, and links every problem he has to bowel movements (“Emotion depends on motion!” he says). While Piku takes good care of him, she also often gets irritated by his eccentricities, nagging and complaining. Piku is a regular customer of Himachal Taxi Service, owned by Rana Chaudhary (Khan). When Piku plans to sell off their home in Kolkata, Bhaskor opposes the idea and decides to go to Kolkata. Not able to let him travel alone, Piku goes along with him, with their servant Bhudan (Singh), by road (Bhaskor’s problems making flight travel difficult), with Rana himself driving the taxi. The encounters the troop faces en route and in Kolkata forms the rest of the film.

 

Bachchan as Bhaskor

“… that is how I am: brutal and honest!”

Indeed, with his “brutal” criticisms, judgements, his constant disparaging statements, eccentric character, and stubbornness, Bhaskor’s character takes no more than few minutes to irritate those around him. At the same time, those same attitudes are what makes this performance of Bachchan so entertaining to watch! The accent, the tone, and his expressions of a typical “grumpy old man” are superb. Although his constipation jokes might be a tad over the limit, you can’t help but love this character! Deepika Padukone plays the caring daughter, caught up in her own world of work problems and what not. To see her handle her father’s tantrums is quite hilarious, but towards the end her acting is moving too. Irrfan Khan plays the role of “the man who sets things right”; unwillingly stuck between this father-daughter duo, he has to control his own anger in front of Bhaskor, and as the story goes he manages to influence both of them. Occasionally pulling off a bit of dry humour and sarcasm, he is responsible for a fair share of the comedy too.

 

Padukone as Piku and Khan as Rana

The story must be praised for its simplicity; dealing with ordinary people and situations, Piku still manages to generate effective humour (there is much more than just the jokes about bowel movement!). I like the way the dialogues have been scripted. Irrfan’s character so subtly changes the mind of Piku and Bhaskor in the course of the story. The ending is a bit unexpected, but nevertheless, it seemed meaningful. In many ways the film is similar to Little Miss Sunshine: a “weird” family going on an unplanned road trip, unforeseen accidents/surprises on the way, and a surprise ending (surprisingly enough, both Alan Arkin and Amitabh won the highest accolade for playing the grumpy old man - Arkin winning the Oscar and Amitabh, the National Award). Both movies have their own charm, and if you haven’t seen the English movie, do watch it!

Piku is worth watching just for Amitabh’s role. It is a refreshing comedy, with superb acting and screenplay. This is one of the good family movies of recent times; don’t miss it!

My Rating: 3.5/5