Baby Girl movie review: Nivin Pauly leads a disappointing thriller that feels like it’s written by a Bobby-Sanjay impersonator

Sanal (Nivin Pauly) works as an attendant at the Good Shepherd Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram, from where a three-day-old baby has gone missing. Although SI Rakesh Narayanan (Abhimanyu Shammy Thilakan) and his team swing into action immediately, they are unable to conduct an extensive combing operation across the city because many officers are busy as they are deputed at an event scheduled to be attended by the chief minister. During the investigation and based on Sanal’s statement, they discover that a woman in a burqa abducted the child, born to young parents in their early 20s. However, as the probe progresses, Sanal becomes a suspect, and siblings Rithu (Lijomol) and Rishi (Sangeeth Prathap) also get caught in the web, as they have some secrets to hide. Amid all this, two questions haunt the police: where is the baby girl, and why is her family not showing much interest in finding her?

Must Read | Chatha Pacha movie review: Roshan Mathew, Arjun Ashokan’s actioner is a thrilling tribute to WWE-obsessed childhoods, but fails as a film

The shallowness in the screenplay of director Arun Varma’s Baby Girl is evident right from the beginning, as it’s marred by convenient plot devices and a tendency to stretch things beyond the limit. Making one feel as if Bobby and Sanjay did not spend even a moment to come up with a unique modus operandi for the abductor, or at least something that isn’t extremely hackneyed, the character is conveniently clad in a burqa here.

Soon, we also see Sanal expressing suspicion about this person to the police. But how or why did he feel that way, though he only saw them during a passing glance near the elevator? Even going forward, the movie does not portray him as an extremely attentive person; if anything, it depicts his character to be the opposite. Hence, the portrayal only makes one feel that the writers are implying that we should start looking at every burqa-clad person with suspicion from now on, thus fueling an already inflammatory rhetoric against Muslims, particularly women, in public.

Watch Baby Girl trailer here:

Although the entire story unfolds within a day, much like the screenwriting duo’s pathbreaking road thriller Traffic (2011), Bobby and Sanjay miserably fail to offer the story any emotional weight or keep the audience on the edge of their seats, eagerly waiting to see how everything turns out in the end. The blandness in each individual moment is apparent in the overall story as well, primarily because we never feel like the stakes are high, nor do we experience any emotional resonance with the story.

While Rithu and Rishi’s track had the potential for these, Bobby and Sanjay never manage to flesh it out properly, leaving the whole episode purely performance-centric. Even a twist in between, reminiscent of the one in Mammootty’s The Truth (1998), fails to land as it’s too obvious right from the start. What makes it even worse is that the writers constantly shift the focus to Sanal, whose track lacks intrigue or drama. It’s doubtful whether the story would have turned out any different had Sanal not been a part of it at all.

Abhimanyu Thilakan, Nivin Pauly, and Lijomol in Baby Girl.

Not only do Bobby and Sanjay fail to raise the stakes, but they also fail to ensure adequate character development or to anchor the narrative strongly somewhere, in contrast to their earlier works, such as Notebook (2006), Ayalum Njanum Thammil (2012), and even Mumbai Police (2013) to some extent. In fact, Baby Girl doesn’t grip us even the way their debut film, Ente Veedu Appuvinteyum (2003), did. Even Sanal’s character, despite much of the movie centring around him, is underdeveloped, preventing one from forming an emotional connection with the film whatsoever. Although the duo’s writings have been steadily declining since Uyare (2019) and especially from One (2021) onwards, this is a fresh low for Bobby and Sanjay after Casanova (2012).

What Baby Girl also lacks is the vision of an incisive director like (late) Rajesh Pillai, the helmer of Traffic, who could understand the soul of a Bobby-Sanjay script and elevate it with his filmmaking skills. Unfortunately, director Arun Varma never manages to compensate for the writing’s shortcomings, and at times Baby Girl even comes across as a mediocre soap opera.

ICYMI | Cheekatilo movie review: Sobhita Dhulipala thriller is earnest but rudimentary

Shockingly, there were moments when I felt a sense of déjà vu, as if I were watching Mohanlal’s 2009 abomination Bhagavan all over again, although the two movies don’t share direct similarities beyond the fact that both revolve around newborns and unfold in a hospital in the span of a few hours. While Baby Girl isn’t as bad as Bhagavan, it certainly had the potential to be so, but is salvaged by only a hair’s breadth, thanks to the makers for finally ending the movie albeit only after giving a couple of pointless and uninteresting false endings.

While Lijomol delivers a serviceable performance, Nivin Pauly is completely wasted in a role that did not require an actor — or a star — of his calibre. What was Abhimanyu Thilakan even trying to do in the film? I have no clue. Even as Sangeeth Prathap disappoints completely, particularly with his performative accent, he never becomes the movie’s biggest shortcoming at any point. Although Sam CS’ music works at certain points, it’s uneven across the film.

Baby Girl movie cast: Nivin Pauly, Lijomol, Sangeeth Prathap, Abhimanyu Thilakan
Baby Girl movie director: Arun Varma
Baby Girl movie rating: 1.5 stars