J Baby Review: Urvashi Steers Through This Wobbly Dysfunctional Family Drama

Writer and director: Suresh Mari

Cast: Urvashi, Dinesh, Lollu Sabha Maaran

Available in: Theatres

Duration: 145 minutes

At some point in the film, we see Urvashi's J Baby, the titular character watch Baby's Day Out (1994) with her grandchildren. The film's tagline too has a reference to this Patrick Read Johnson directorial. This scene subtly conveys two important aspects that the entire film elaborately (and sometimes exhaustingly) works on.

Let's draw a few similarities between the 'babies' in these two films. Well, there is no ransom threat in the Urvashi film. So their reasoning for stepping out are different. Yet as a character study, they are in their own worlds, exploring and roaming around the cities as they wish. Unbeknownst to themselves, they do cause a lot of trouble and the directors — both Johnson and Suresh Mari — milk it for funny moments. But it’s necessary to point out how differently the world views them both. For, it looks at a child as someone innocent and an old person as ignorant.

The film underlines how old people deserve as much care as a baby, what with having spent all their life toiling for their kids. In this film, Baby gets married at 13 and has five children — Shankar (Dinesh), Sekhar (Lollu Sabha Maaran), Selvi, Sharmila and Selvam. We never get to see her husband who, we are told, is dead. Right from the doodles in the opening credits, you only see Urvashi taking care of the kids. But when the tables are turned, are her children now ready to swap roles?

Before we begin talking about the film, let’s get back to its second important reference to Baby’s Day Out. While watching the movie, Baby tells her grandchildren that the baby in the film within the film is actually her. You initially dismiss it as one of her other delusional brags like how Indira Gandhi or Jayalalitha is her best friend. The connection though hits you when in a later scene, we see a person explain to Sankar and Selvi that a human being's life is like a circle where everyone eventually becomes a child again. This is the central theme of J Baby, which is based on a true incident. And director Suresh addresses it through the lens of a dysfunctional family.

The fact that J Baby is a film based on a real incident is both its boon and bane. In 2013, an old woman accidentally landed in Kolkata and her two sons scoured the streets to find her. Drawing heavily from this incident, the film has a proper emotional narrative. It takes a non-linear route to explain this, beginning with the police informing Sankar and Shekar that their missing mother is found in Kolkata. While this helps retain the suspense, the technique is also quite distracting; that it takes you a while to even understand who is who in this film. For instance, the film tells you in detail about her five children and their lives only in the second half, which means apart from Sankar and Shekar, you don't recognise the others and for most part of the film, you find yourself counting the number of members in the frame, trying to understand their relationship.

This also hampers the storytelling; the sum of all that we see is not as intriguing and effective as the individual parts. For instance, we don’t get to see who Urvashi really is until the second half. But the first half is filled with laugh-out-loud moments featuring the brothers (Dinesh and Maaran) who are forced to stick it out together to find their mother. You can see the effort that has gone into writing some of their conversations — like when Maaran breaks down and questions why his brother wouldn’t take his side even in front of a third person. But placing such an important conversation just after you have witnessed another emotionally-heavy moment thwarts its intended impact.

Likewise, when the film takes a melodramatic shift, you seamlessly buy into it, thanks to the heart-rending performances, especially by Urvashi. After laughing for over an hour at the banter between the brothers and Urvashi's notorious acts — like offering a gold ring to a stranger or creating a ruckus that puts her children in trouble, all it takes is a single dialogue from her — Na enna panrenu enake therila da (I don’t know what I am doing) — to tear you apart. Yet this makes you wonder — would this shift from comedy to melodrama be as effective if not for Urvashi?

It is her performance that brings you into this world whenever the writing struggles to go beyond scratching the surface. For instance, a devastated Baby leaves her family for good. And it's to be noted that not even a single soul looks out for her at this juncture. Yet suddenly, after five days, they are ready to travel to Kolkata to bring her back home. This dissonance in the character arcs are upsetting. So when you cry or want to cry, it’s because of the impact in performance and not its writing.

Suddenly, you are loaded with one emotional moment after another. Neither the film preps you for it nor does it let the moment linger for you to process it. And just like that, after the emotional overdose, we get back to jester mode. Even when the film raises some important questions, giving you a moving portrayal of pain and neglection among the elderly, you are bogged down by the multitude of sentiments the film wants you to feel. So a scene is fun or sad while it lasts but when the film ends, a piece of this emotional puzzle seems to be missing.