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How could Rajnikanth do this?
Baba sorely disappoints.
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Ashok Narayan in Atlanta
The expectation was high. A Rajnikanth movie, Baba, after nearly three years. The last was Padayappa, a big hit.
For weeks, I had been following my friend's - a die-hard Rajnikanth fan - updates on the latest buzz on Baba. And so I got dragged to the movie, along with his wife, when it was released in Atlanta. I must mention here that he happens to be a database administrator for a Fortune 100 company, but neither a crashed server nor a severe thunderstorm could stop him from being at the theater on time.
The scene at the theater lobby was one to behold. Rajnikanth fans, like my friend, anxious, rife with expectation, enlightening the ones they had dragged along on Rajni sagas and lore.
Finally, we were inside the hall. The movie started. By now, the anticipation levels had soared. The minute Rajnikanth's name appeared in the credits for the story and screenplay, there was heavy whistling and cheering from the audience. At that moment, we could as well have been somewhere on Mount Road or Egmore in Chennai, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, instead of at the corner of an obscure strip mall in an Atlanta suburb.
Wish the movie fulfilled that anticipation, though. By the second scene, the writing was on the wall. The expression on the enthusiastic fans' faces was akin to a situation if batsman Sachin Tendulkar were to get out on a low score at a key cricket match.
Now, for the storyline: a saint is born to an elderly couple (this has to be the millionth Tamil movie with this idea). He grows up a rowdy atheist (an aging Rajnikanth, his attempts to camouflage his years seem to have failed), with a heart of gold.
However, he soon becomes spiritual, on a so-called trip to the Himalayas, aided by tacky computer simulation, and returns to mainstream society to clean up a few corrupt politicians.
The political angle has been a fixture in Rajnikanth's films for a while now, since his first production, Valli. There is the deputy chief minister's son whom Rajnikanth bashes up. Then he issues a warning to the deputy chief minister. And then, the chief minister. A fourth villain appears from nowhere - Amrish Puri as a great black magician.
Amidst all this, Rajnikanth finds time to cavort around a few exotic locales with another aging heroine Manisha Koirala, all in dream songs. So much for originality from the superstar.
In keeping with Muthu's - an earlier Rajnikanth starrer - success in Japan, Baba has a Japanese girl playing Rajnikanth's adopted sister.
Within the first hour of the movie, catcalls flew thick and fast. One soul quipped, "This is more like Jagan Mohini [a 1978 B-grade Tamil horror movie]." There was laughter all around, more out of sarcasm, because Goundamani's - who plays Rajnikanth's friend -comedy, if I may call it so was an apology.
For the first time in my life, I was witness to 90 percent of the audience ridiculing a Rajnikanth movie. I could hear some die-hards talking in hushed tones, "How could Rajnikanth do this?" Oh, and by now, my good friend had sunk deep into his seat, his face a mixture of embarrassment and disappointment.
We filed out at the end of the movie, surrounded by people who had seesawed between the ecstasy of expectation and agony of the movie.