Baby John Movie Review & Rating: At a pivotal moment in the film, Rajpal Yadav’s character, a sidekick to the hero, delivers the standout line of Baby John: “comedy is serious business.”
It was one of the few times I heard laughter in the preview theater. This punchline is the kind of humor that masala movies use to get the audience roaring. It says a lot about Baby John, which runs a punishing 164 minutes, that a comic’s dialogue garners more applause than the hero’s line: “Par main toh pehli baar aaya hoon.”
After enduring this bloated, chaotic, derivative, incoherent mess, I felt like telling lead actor Varun Dhawan, who is poorly suited for this type of film — while cameras can capture his slow-motion swagger, his delivery is more appropriate for low-key comedies — that he needn’t have bothered. Baby John is a strong contender for the title of the worst film of 2024, a year when star-driven Bollywood has truly stumbled.
Making masala films is serious business too, especially when you see the blockbuster Pushpa 2 still drawing crowds. That film is even longer, but there the hero feels authentic, and the action sequences have a rhythm. The Sukumar-Allu Arjun duo throws everything at us — the kitchen sink, dishwasher detergent, and plenty more — and some of it actually works.
The problem with Baby John, a remake of Vijay’s 2016 hit Theri, is that very little resonates. The difference between a good and bad masala film often lies in originality. Baby John feels pieced together from various sources: why this endless fascination with ships, docks, and heroes hanging upside down? First Pushpa, now Baby John.
The relationship between the cute Khushi (Zyanna) and Baby John (Varun Dhawan) recalls Shah Rukh Khan’s bond with the little girl in Jawan, along with other father-daughter pairs. The tranquil pace of Alappuzha in Kerala disrupts when these two become entangled with a human trafficking gang run by the sinister Babbar Sher (Jackie Shroff). Yes, that’s really his name. And, of course, there’s a backstory: the lungi-clad regular joe Baby John used to be a cop, with a sweetheart (Keerthy Suresh) and a mother (Sheeba Chadha, Bollywood’s latest favorite mom).
Yet all those plot points serve merely as a pretext for Baby John, aka DCP Satya Varma, to find his footing and take down the bad guys with guns, swords, fists — anything that can become a weapon. The director, who has worked with Atlee, crams in as many fight scenes as possible across various locations. Humans are maimed, burned, and trampled; body parts fly, blood spills, and who cares if we’re desensitized by the violence on display?
If you want to see Jackie Shroff as a menacing villain, watch him in the gripping 2010 film Aranya Kaandam, where he first embraced his villainous role in Southern cinema. Here, he shakes his disheveled locks and slits throats, with a layer of “haldi” on his face (we don’t ask why) while a little girl who knows he’s done something terrible calls him “daadu.” Yes, that’s right. How does she know? We’re not inquiring. And no, children do not escape unscathed in this film.
Varun Dhawan leads the cast in Baby John. Keerthy Suresh has a significant yet disconnected presence with Dhawan; Gabbi, who plays a secretive teacher, gets just enough screen time to justify her role. Before you know it, Sanya Malhotra appears and disappears in a blink-and-you-miss-it part.
When Varun Dhawan, channeling his inner Salman Khan (with shirts and vests occasionally coming off), shares a climactic moment with the latter in a very “Pathan” style, you realize two things: Baby John may try its best, but even an aging Bhai Jaan elevates the game. And there will undoubtedly be a sequel. Groan.
It feels fitting that this is how this disappointing year comes to a close. What does Bollywood have in store for us in 2025? I’m not holding my breath.
