Review of Shamitabh

Director R.Balki always make films with a truly unconventional concept whether it is the love story of a 64 year old guy with a 34 year old lady in "Cheeni Kum" or Amitabh Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan's role reversal as as Son and Father in "Paa". In his latest "Shamitabh" too he has came up with a brand new concept of a superstar who is mute and his voice is borrowed from someone else.
The name is also very unique which itself describes that it is a combination of too among them one is the face and other is sound.

The story is of guy from a small village of Maharashtra, Danish(Dhanush). Danish is a true movie buff from his childhood who never miss any movie and acts according to the actors whom he saw on the screen. He dreams to be an actor someday but the major roadblock is that he can not speak. Still he comes to Mumbai to meet big directors but no one pays attention to him. One day he caught the attention of an assistant director Akshara (Akshara Hasan). She took much initiative to help Danish to achieve his dreams but fails due to his voice problems. All of sudden she came to know about a speech therapy in Finland from his father who is a doctor. With the help of this therapy a micro cheap is installed in Danish's throat and now he can listen and store the voice of another person through an ear-

piece connected to both the person and then he can speak the same stored lines in the same stored voice with the help of the cheap. Now Danish and Akshara needs a perfect voice for Danish and luck brings them to a drunkard old person Amitabh Sinha(Amitabh Bachchan) , who lives his life in a cemetery. Amitabh Sinha is failed person in his life who wanted to be an actor when he was young but got rejected for his voice. In spite of some hesitation in the beginning Amitabh agrees to give his voice to Danish. For that Amitabh always have to be close premise of Danish so he becomes the vallet to Danish with a new name Robert.  Thus comes the a new superstar Shamitabh (Danish with the voice of Amitabh). With his very first film Shamitabh becomes a super star and a big brand but soon some creative differences starts between Danish and Amitabh with the matter of choosing scripts for films. Later this creative differences turns into huge ego clash when Amitabh realizes he is getting no attention and media and public are going mad only for Danish. What happens then does this collaboration continues or not and if not then how they even manage without each other, to know that you have to watch the film.

The story start s with a brilliant idea but after going to a point you will realizes that the story is not moving forward. That too could have been managed by writing an intelligent screenplay but that too is not up to the mark specially in the second half. Some scenes looks so repetitive like Amitabh's drunk scenes. the example of whisky and water has also been overused. The whole portion of London episode could have been easily avoided or at least shortened which could have made the film less lengthy. The romantic track of Danish and Akshara is also half baked. The climax is quite experimental but it comes too late and by that time people really does not care about it.That does not mean the film does not have good moments of course it has for example the madness of danish about films in the beginning sequences or when Danish and Amitabh acts together for lifebuoy audition that is very funny.

In spite of the short comings of the screenplay if the film can hold your attention for the long 153 minutes running time is the acting of the leading actors Amitabh

Bachchan and Dhanush. Both of them are too good with their character and  together their chemistry is very nice. Amitabh Bachchan no doubt in the superstar of the millennium, he can pull out any character well but for the first time his extremely superb voice has been given so much importance even it has been said that even a dog can perform well with that voice. But his character is written such a way that it looks very much one directional it does not have multiple shades. he is always drunk, angry and arrogant. People hardly sympathies for the character because his frustration and ego is also not justified totally. It is an well established fact in India that people pay more attention to looks of the actors not too the voice maybe that's why the dubbed South Indian movies too get applause from audiences. In some moments the character is too loud too. Being a die hard fan of Amitabh Bachchan ,director R.Balki has always given him the best characters but here he

has given too much importance to the actor and  has stretched the character too much which does not work well. On the other hand Dhanush has done a superb job as the mute Danish. He has lots of scenes where he have to perform without any dialogues and probably even harder was to match the baritone of Mr. Bachchan and perform accordingly but Dhanush managed both quite well with voice (of other actor) and without voice.

Akshara Hasan has made a confident debut, though her character is half baked and she does not get enough scope to perform but still the lady in black attire manages to grab attention. Although she needs to improve in two departments, her dialogue delivery needs to improved which sounds very flat and the other one is her hairstyle which almost covers half of her beautiful face.

As a director R.Balki has worked very well but he should have more control on him while writing the screenplay and should not have stretch the idea too much. He has managed to take good work by his actors and the technical team but still it does not match the expectation levels set by him with his earlier works as a director.

Among the technical team who impressed the most is the cinematographer P.C.Sreeram he has shot the film very well. The background score by Illayraja also goes well with scenes.

There is very less scope of songs in the story but two songs "Ishq-Fillum" and "Pidly" are good songs. The lyrics of the song "Ishq-Fillum" penned by Swanand Kirkire describes teh madness about movies very well. The choreography in the song "Sannata" has been done well by Bosco-Ceaser though the song does not add much value to the story rather it acts as an interruption.

On a whole "Shamitabh" is a movie invented from a brilliant idea which has been stretched a bit too much but still it manages to impress for its brilliant performers. It brings a valuable question what makes an actor to be popular his looks, his acting , his voice or all of those together in right proportion? Go and watch the film for Ishq of Fillum(love for movies).