Baby John Review: Varun Dhawan, Kalees’s action thriller is a misfire of epic proportions

Baby John

2024 was a disastrous year for Bollywood. For 2024 to end with Kalees’s Baby John, poetic justice for the film sums up quite succinctly the many things wrong with mainstream Hindi cinema today. For starters, it doesn’t help that the film is (almost) a scene-by-scene remake of Theri, Atlee’s 2016 Tamil actioner starring Vijay, Samantha Ruth Prabhi in lead roles. The task here was rather simple. The film crew was given all the vegetables—boiled, fried and cooked—all they had to do was add salt and pepper to it. For them to not be able to do that is worrying.

Baby John Review: Plot

The idea (and screenplay) isn’t novel per-se. That the cast doesn’t really do justice to their bits adds insult to injury. John D’Silva (played by Varun Dhawan), is a lungi-wearing, head-smashing single father who lives with his daughter Khushi (Zara Zyanna). Romance brews between Khushi’s teacher Tara (played by an underutilized Wamiqa Gabbi) and Silva, as the two uncover flesh trade rackets being run by Nana (the antagonist, played by Jackie Shroff).

Nana has scores to settle with John. The single father was once a dashing cop DCP Satya (what a year it has been for characters named ‘Satya’)! His wife Meera (Keerthy Suresh) and mother (Sheeba Chaddha) are murdered in cold blood by Nana. As an act of revenge, Satya murders Nana’s son. Who will have the last laugh in the battle between an ex-cop and a flesh trade kingpin? Whosoever has the last laugh, the audience might just tear up. More so when the first day first show theater feels like a screening, more like a prayer meeting on a chilly winter morning.

Baby John Review: Performances

Varun Dhawan simply cannot do the heavy lifting one expects from an actor playing Satya/John/ The acting chops are rather subpar, as is the screenplay and direction. Much like (countless) other films this year, Baby John has a unique way of delivering its women safety PSA. The messaging, let alone subtle, hammers into the audience in the most melodramatic, cliched way possible, the importance of respecting women. This might just be the worst thing to happen to women since men.

Baby John Review: What Works, What Doesn’t

The film’s blasphemously long 159-minute runtime will test your patience. I couldn’t help but wonder if this is how 2024 is meant to end. Not with a bang but a whimper. Rajpal Yadav’s comic chops cannot entirely salvage the narrative which isn’t engaging and often comes across as a disjointed, chaotic mess.

Besides the many obvious pitfalls, the film also has a few logical inconsistencies. And yes, there are moments which are unintentionally hilarious, moments where you live with the characters instead of laughing with them. In many ways Kalees’s film can be used as a case study on why there is an urgent need for mainstream Hindi cinema to pause, think and reflect. To recalibrate and figure out where it all went wrong. This introspection is long due.

Star rating: 1 / 5 star

Baby John is now playing in theaters.