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
