'Baby John' movie review: Why AI will replace human creativity

Baby John

Baby John
U/A: Action, thriller
Dir: Kalees
Cast: Varun Dhawan, Keerthy Suresh
Rating: 1/5

You only have to experience this film to figure how hilarious, or howlarious it feels, over the first few minutes, before you settle in, when all the actors look, behave and talk coyly, as if Hindi is probably not their main language. And this is actually some sorta South Indian blockbuster type picture, terribly dubbed into Hindi, for a small-town mass audience.

Surely, the language mustn't matter, when the syntax is strictly South mainstream. At some point, the hero, i.e. Varun Dhawan even breaks into Malayalam.

This gentleman, in tight khakis, is a cop. He probably wished to be paired opposite Alia Bhatt on screen. The producers brought onboard a Telugu/Tamil semi-lookalike, Keerthy Suresh, instead.

This heroine and the hero are set to get married. Girl's father is opposed to this move. He abhors cops that kill for a living, after all. Family meets at a café nonetheless, where a hardcore shootout suitably breaks out.

It's at this point that I get a déjà vu, or more likely, déjà chu - the sense of having seen the same lunacy before, somewhere. Felt the same in that elaborate killing-spree sequence, when the hero's family members get bumped off in quick succession, while a baby is stuck in the bathtub.

Of course, that déjà vu comes from the fact that these are the only two moments I recall instantly from Atlee's Vijay starrer Theri (2016), that Baby John is practically a scene-by-scene remake of.

I'd quickly burnt through Atlee's filmography, before he had a big Bollywood release slated with Shah Rukh Khan. What it confirmed for me is how much better Jawan (2023) was, from anything that Atlee had directed earlier. He's produced Baby John. Which is not an exception.

Not that you should have an issue with remakes. If the movies are gonna remain the same, regardless - may as well remake them, since everybody's run outta ideas, anyway.

Just goes to show how AI (Artificial Intelligence) will replace human creativity sooner than you think. Maybe ChatGPT can prompt a better but similar script. Sora can effectively recreate visuals, already.

What's this pic about, beyond senseless stunts, or expensive pyrotechnic, in any case? Search me!

Or maybe examine the bird-brain of the bare-bodied villain, Nanaji (supremely fit Jackie Shroff, 67), who goes, "Mein babbar sher hoon (I'm the lion king)," only to reiterate later, "Mein bhagwan hoon (I'm God)" - decide, bro!

He's one powerful maniac, though, whose son expresses a desire to get into politics: "Papa, nobody respects me, I want to be a minister."

Papa decrees, "Okay bachcha, aaj se baba finance minister!" These baba blokes, it appears, have been indulging in a massive girl-trafficking dhanda. The hero must put an end to it.

And that's really the point of this pic - not child-trafficking, but the hero in it, of course. As baby-faced John puts it in the meta line, single-handedly shouldering a relentless, humourless, demented actioner, "Mere jaise bahut aayein honge, par mein pehli baar aaya hoon (Many may have come before me, but this is my first time)."

This is indeed Varun's first flick in the stunt genre, if you discount his web debut, Citadel: Honey Bunny. You wish him luck, what else.

The assumption, in this case, is the audiences really care for individual scenes, rather than a script/story that tie them together. I don't blame the mental math. Given Pushpa 2 is the Sholay of our times!

Baby John is closer to the deliberately badly-made, Hindi-dub seeming southern stuff, Ready (2011), Bodyguard (2011), that Salman Khan would throw up a decade-plus ago.

They probably worked for the sheer strength of Salman's onscreen persona alone. Salman makes a deadly cameo in this pic. Speaking of running outta ideas!

What do I do then? Be positive. Observe something to appreciate. That scene with girls inside a shipping container looks pretty good, no? Oh, at least there isn't misogyny in this movie, about a guy who's "been to boys' school, boys' college, and boys' police academy."

Hmmm… Otherwise, I have a Sheryl Crowe song playing in my head to drown out ‘Don't worry, Mustafa' type number playing for the background score: Va-run baby, run baby, run…

'YUCK ''WHATEVER '''GOOD ''''SUPER '''''AWESOME