Billu Barber – Shaved at the Box Office
Friends, Indians, desis around the world, lend us your ears:
There’s absolutely no reason to see this piece of crap a.k.a. Billu Barber unless money is burning a hole in your pocket, time hangs too heavily on your hands or you come in your pants at the mere mention of Shahrukh Khan’s name (like the people in the Budbuda village in which this movie is set).
That trash like Billu Barber continues to be made and, worse, released in theatres around the world is a testament to the incredible mediocrity and utter shamelessness pervading Bollywood today.
Silly Exercise
Directed by a clueless dodo called Priyadarshan, Billu Barber is a silly movie with a cast of buffoons (with the sole exception of Irrfan Khan) making monkeys of themselves and the audience.
The movie centers around the arrival of a superstar Sahir Khan (who else, Shahrukh Khan) on a film shoot to Budbuda village, where a poor barber Billu (Irrfan Khan) is struggling to make ends meet.
Billu, who was the object of ridicule in the village, quickly becomes the pet of everyone once the villagers know that in his younger days he was a close friend of the superstar Sahir Khan.
How the villagers’ expectations of meeting the superstar Sahir Khan causes chaos in Billu’s life forms the gist of this must-miss movie.
Having seen Kuselan, the Tamil predecessor of Billu Barber, we went in with low expectations.
Shahrukh Khan, Priyadarshan, Farah Khan, et al have done their utmost to deliver a crapshow that was far worse than we’d feared. By the way, a version of Billu Barber was first made in Malayalam as Kadha Parayumbol (2007).
Mediocre Acting
In Billu Barber, Shahrukh Khan delivers a mediocre performance unworthy of a superstar who has acted in over five dozen movies. In some movie-within-the-movie scenes, he has a tired look on his face.
Whether in the movie-within-the-movie or in the main movie itself (such as in crucial scenes like the speech at the school or the final meeting with Billu), Shahrukh Khan comes across as no more than a tyro. What a shame. Continue reading »
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