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Baby John

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Rahul Desai

Baby John
Rahul Desai
The Hollywood Reporter India
A weapon of mass-movie destruction

Varun Dhawan's remake of Atlee and Vijay’s Tamil film 'Theri' is lewd, rude and painfully crude

Watching a mass actioner is a bit like watching West Indies play T20 cricket. When it comes off, there’s no better sight in sports. It’s all fireworks and fury, natural showmanship and musical rhythm. It makes no sense, yet the joy is real. But when it doesn’t come off, it can look like one giant Steve Smith mishit: ugly, awkward, strange, abnormal. Baby John is an example. Nothing aligns. The timing is woefully off, the star wattage is awry, the sound mix is all over the place, the action is unimaginative, it’s 164 minutes of dated narrative tropes, and the money shots don’t add up. That’s the thing about the genre: it’s boom or bust. It’s high-risk, high-reward, high-everything filmmaking. West Indies either chases down 250 or gets skittled out for 45 — there is seldom an in-between version.

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