Dedh Minute Review: Shamitabh

In Shamitabh, actor Amitabh Bachchan plays a character who is extremely picky about his scripts, and that is the film’s biggest irony, says Aniruddha Guha in his Dedh Minute Review.

Dhanush plays a mute Igatpuri boy who wants to be a film star. He lands up in Mumbai and bumps into an assistant director, Akshara, who is so enthralled by his talent, she flies him down to Finland and pays for a surgery. A surgery that does not ensure that Dhanush can speak again, but one that helps somebody else to speak through him with the help of a new technology. That somebody is Amitabh Bachchan.

May be, you can wrap your head around that extremely absurd and inane idea. May be, you could buy the argument that Bachchan’s voice could suit another actor, especially one who is 40 years younger than him. And may be you could overlook the fact that Bachchan’s baritone just does not go with Dhanush’s personality. Even if you allow the film all its flights of fancies, even then, Shamitabh is a drag.

All R Balki films centre around Bachchan, but Shamitabh takes the director’s obsession with the actor beyond even Bbuddah Hoga Terra Baap levels, another self-referential Amitabh Bachchan film. Shamitabh lacks coherence, common sense, or even a basic level of engagement.

There’s a dialogue about scotch and water, and about how scotch doesn’t need water, but water is pointless without scotch. If I have to use that analogy to describe the film, Shamitabh is all water, no scotch.