Khan(s) and Able

When Manikandan's camera zooms in on the lush green topography of Pollachi and zeroes in on Billu's (Irrfan) carefully constructed house, you settle down in your seat realizing that Priyadarshan is not going to come up with anything innovative this time as regards lighting, camera angles and the like (It is high time Priyadarshan and Sabu Cyril bade each other good bye, they have been showing us the same sets ever since Thenmavin Kombath that was released a good 15 years ago!)

But Priyan does surprise you with his deft handling of the comic sequences- there is not even a hint of slapstick here and that is when you end up standing the first and the best Khan in this enterprise! Om Puri is as loud as he has been in all Priyan films of the past, Sad!

Priyan has been faithful to Sreenivasan's script for Katha Parayumbol and that probably is the reason why he is under control while handling the comic as well as emotional sequences. However, the ace director goes all wrong in a couple of departments- showing off Pollachi as Uttar Pradesh which is a bit too much even for a Cinematic Liberty; casting of Lara Dutta as the village barber's wife- though Lara brings in a certain sincerity to her performance, her style, intelligence and sophistication defeats her; the child artists who have been given so much to mouth that at one point of time you feel like smacking them right across their faces and ask them to just shut up and of course the excessive commerciaization in the form of bringing in 3 leading ladies for item numbers. There is no denying the fact that Kareena, Priyanka and Deepika look hot but the item numbers serve as mere speed breakers in taking the narrative forward!

Shah Rukh Khan is thankfully highly restrained and does a good job with the climax scene where he pours out his emotions for the long lost friend. "Billu" is in the genre of the Hrishikesh Mukherjee brand of "saaf, suthri, paarivarik comedies" of the 70's and there definitely are times when you feel the narrative is just not moving forward! That said, "Billu" is watchable for its noble storyline. It does make an attempt to tell you that there are relationships worth your time in this fast paced world but I would not say it has been completely successful in delivering the message.