Dangerous liaisons

An adult comedy is by and large, a litmus test for the hypocrisy levels of film watchers in India. Essentially, borderline cases between soft porn and sexual humour, such films, despite an excuse of a storyline manage to score at the ticket-window for their curiosity-inducing content. The audience is overwhelmingly male for these films in which the clumsy-wooing antics of gawky teenagers and ignorant youngsters are enjoyed with great relish.

Hindi cinema, too, has had an uneasy relationship with this genre of flicks. Still ‘Babu Baga Busy’, a remake of the 2015 freak hit ‘Hunterr’, was awaited more for the star cast comprising Srinivas Avasarala and a set of heroines like Tejaswi Madivada, Mishti Chakraborty and Supriya Aysola, who have become popular in recent times.

Playing down the raunchy, raw style adopted by the original film’s director, Naveen Medaram moves back and forth over a twenty-year period, beginning from 1997 throughout the film. The adolescent period, the teenage tantrums and the awakening of adulthood among three boys is shown in a series of sequences, gently and even self-consciously in a few places. This may be due to the sensitivity factor of the Telugu audience, one feels. However, in the process, the film does not move away drastically from the original, throughout its two-hour running time.

Avasarala, in the role of a pleasure-seeking youngster who is more interested in liaisons than getting into a serious relationship, carries it off adequately. The three ladies, who come into his life, too, have a role in shaping his final decision of getting hitched, thereby exposing an average man’s mindset towards obligation-free sex. Without posturing on male-female relationships, the film stays in the zone of how dalliances take place and how it affects both in its own ways.

Twisting the direction of the film into a family social milieu, Medaram gently weaves a romantic subtext into the proceedings where true love conquers everything, including bitter outcomes of past connections for the lead pair. Staying true to the Hindi screenplay, which itself sagged in patches with contrived emotions slowing it down further, the director hardly leaves a feeling of involvement for the young crowd, his target audience.

The tingle of forbidden pleasure which the hero seems to be reveling in, right from the start, is the only fascination for the boys in the theatres. Here too, with a generation which is more adventurous and yet practical when it comes to matters of the heart, it is unclear whether this film will appeal to them in the way the director expects it to.

Film Name : Babu Baga Busy

Cast : Srinivas Avasarala, Mishti Chakraborty, Tejaswi Madivada, Supriya Aysola
Direction : Naveen Medaram
Genre : Adult Comedy
Likes : New genre for Telugu cinema
Dislikes : Self-conscious at times

By K Naresh Kumar