Bha Bha Ba movie review: Dileep’s film is a riot, but of the painfully bad kind

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The arm-twisting, though, doesn’t wait until the end. Right at the outset, director Dhananjay Shankar’s debut film forces you to completely discount the fact that its protagonist, Dileep, was part of a troubling assault case involving a well-known female actor until less than two weeks ago. The 58-year-old star was acquitted in the trial concluded on December 8, but with the actress-survivor, herself, condemning the verdict and the injustice dealt to her, Bha Bha Ba couldn’t have passed off as any innocuous Friday release. In contrast, the narrative set in the film seems unabashedly indifferent to outer-world concerns, and it becomes nearly impossible for the sane viewer to blur the line between fact and fiction.

Instead, Bha Bha Ba wants to be a self-aware and excessively jolly affair in the way it conducts itself, so the central plot of the film is treated with a tangential approach rife with gags, quirks, subplots, meta references, and a whole lot of excess. The protagonist, a nameless man, kidnaps the chief minister of Kerala, CK Joseph (Baiju Santhosh), by slipping him a drink mixed with laxatives. The CM’s own son and NEA officer Noble (Vineeth Sreenivasan) becomes the investigating officer, while a small group of experts works alongside him as double-agents.

An emotional past featuring the nameless man and the CM is introduced in batches, new characters flutter in attempting to make that “vibe” stronger, a famed gangster named Ghilli Bala (Mohanlal) enters the fray with his own storyline, and chaos continues to erupt without a hint of caution. Writers Fahim Safar and Noorin Shereef take such sweeping liberties that, in their world, almost anything is deemed acceptable as long as it serves the film’s overarching celebratory mood. The only problem, and a big one, is that they leave the audience completely unaware of what they are celebrating, or why the celebrations are on in the first place.

But when looked closely, that upbeat spirit of the film could feel insidious. The protagonist is termed a professional kidnapper, not without the pretence of alluding to the real-life case Dileep was accused of masterminding. The climactic shots of his character being hailed as a wounded hero deliver a jolt, much like the film’s other pointed nods to reality. It can’t be claimed without proof that these moments, so to speak, occur by a careful design, but the barrage of gimmicks doesn’t fully hide the murkiness of the storytelling.

Bha Bha Ba is dense, to say the least, and even the fleeting moments of entertainment feel suffocated under the weight of its overindulgence. Brothers Vineeth and Dhyan Sreenivasan’s squabbles are amusing, but the impact of those scenes feels accidental in broader consideration. The self-parody nature of the film, wherein senior cops and characters of high stature spout silly things in a Leslie Nielsen manner, works somewhat, but the tonal inconsistency in the film is so glaring that the jokes hardly register. Mohanlal’s bromantic gig with Dileep, with the two doing a Naatu Naatu-like shimmy and whatnot, is stretched to such an excruciating length that you wonder what obligated the superstar actor to take up the role.

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Add to this the soundtrack that wouldn’t relent and the general self-aggrandising tone that stirs up more discomfort, and you get a film that feels far too full of itself. It’d be unacceptable to ask anyone to separate the reel narrative here from the real one out there, but Bha Bha Ba remains unsalvageable on every count.

Bha Bha Ba movie cast: Dileep, Vineeth Sreenivasan, Dhyan Sreenivasan, Sandy, Balu Varghese, Baiju Santhosh, Saranya Ponvannan, Sidharth Bharathan, Redin Kingsley, Ashokan, Maniyanpilla Raju
Bha Bha Ba movie director: Dhananjay Shankar
Bha Bha Ba movie rating: 1.5 stars