Ram Srikar
It's quite easy to write off Baby as a shallow, biased drama punctuated with the male gaze early on. But if you feel something's problematic in Baby, the film will likely address it through a character.
The three main characters, childhood sweethearts Anand and Vaishnavi, and her college friend Viraj, are imperfect beings driven by mad love with their every mistake, regardless of how good their intention might be, making the plot thicker and murkier.
There are some brilliant writing choices in the film. Moral ambiguity, however, is a trait reserved only for the leads. The weakest and the most annoying writing choice has to be for an external antagonist named Sita a caricaturish representation of a spoilt girl.
Speaking of the movie-viewing experience Baby offers, Vijay Bulganin is undoubtedly the strongest pillar of Baby, and his music accentuates the drama wonderfully. While 'O Rendu Prema Meghalila' is the soul of the film, breathing life into even tiny moments.
The film makes it a point to establish that it's telling the story of simple, flawed people who are not necessarily progressive. So whether you sympathise with the characters or not might be a subjective choice. The beauty of Baby is that nothing exists in simple black and white, everything is grey.