Burfi - Review

 Anurag Basu has surely come a long way from ‘Kites’ and a short way from ‘Life in a… Metro’. He needs to be applauded for stitching together this simple yet soulful story, without magnifying the disabilities of the lead characters.
Barfi! is a whistled version of Murphy, the name of our deaf and mute hero (Ranbir Kapoor) or how he would call himself. He sits on the fence between village idiot and neighbourhood prankster in the lovely hill station of Darjeeling. Set in the 1970s, He can be described as Chaplin meets Mr Bean meets Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. And with words out of the way, Barfi’s actions score in the loudness competition hands down. So when Shruti (Ileana D’Cruz), a Bong babe on a holiday, comes into his line of vision, he instantly applies all his non-verbal abilities to voice his heart. After initially brushing aside her feelings, she gives in. But wait, she is engaged to a certain someone else and is due to get married in a month. Naturally, Barfi’s muted explosion of sorrow follows. But just like the song, ‘he gets knocked down and then he gets up again’ to find comfort in childhood friend Jhilmil (Priyanka Chopra). Jhilmil is an autistic girl who has deceptive parents and a whole lot of inheritance from a recently deceased grandpa. The love story drifts into a suspense thriller when Jhilmil goes missing, while her parents claim that she has been kidnapped. Inspector Dutta (Saurabh Shukla) wants to get to the bottom of the case as he can’t make much from the two different ransom notes that are discovered.
Ranbir manages to convey a diversity of moods wordlessly and doesn’t resort to hamming which was very possible here, considering he was left to play dumb charades through the film. Even Priyanka Chopra pulls off her character with just the right amount of abnormality, easily and effectively.
Barfi! is not a story that will make it into the ‘Chicken Soup for the deaf and mute’ or the ‘Spinach salad for the autistic’. But when you watch the film, you will realize that we should only be glad about that. In short, Barfi says it best when he says nothing at all.

BhargavaCharitham

Another humourous entertainer from sreenivasan. He alone steels the show. Except a few scenes Mammootty is a shadow to him. Heroines are just for name sake. a few moments to laugh.
Overall an entertainer;but nothing for a serious movie goer.