In books and movies, references to grandparents are often nostalgia-tinted anecdotes of summer holidays and great home-cooked food. Beneath that veneer, there could be a side to some grandparents that’s not easy to embrace. A grandmother who’s benevolent to her grandson may have been unfair to someone else in the family, without even realising it.
Oh! Baby , a remake of the Korean film Miss Granny , is centred around a petulant 70-year-old Baby (Lakshmi) who’s warm but overbearing, her bitterness a residue of her own rough younger days. What makes parents and grandparents become a bit of a pain? Can they breathe easy and can the younger generation also learn to not take their barbs to heart?
Director Nandini Reddy and writer Lakshmi Bhupala explore the dynamics of relationships in a carnival-like setting. Carnival? When Baby turns young by a quirk of fate and takes the name of Swati (Samantha), she gets rid of her joint pains, eats without worrying about digestion issues, and sings and dances to her heart’s content. It’s celebration time. A whole lot of fun ensues, and in between all those laugh aloud moments, there’s room for introspection for all the key characters.
The initial portions set the tone for the story. Baby runs a college canteen with her childhood friend Chanti (Rajendra Prasad) and is generous to her grandson (Teja Sajja) who’s part of a music band. She adores her son Shekhar (Rao Ramesh) but isn’t sensitive, to put it mildly, to her daughter-in-law (Pragati). Baby is a nag, fussing over day-to-day things, especially the chapala pulusu . Shekhar teaches geriatrics and understands his mother’s ways. But he stays aloof to the stress that his mother inflicts on his wife. When things come to a boil, Baby gets a reality check.
- Cast: Samantha, Lakshmi, Rajendra Prasad, Naga Shourya
- Direction: Nandini Reddy
- Music: Mickey Meyer
The fun begins when Baby transforms to Swati — a 20-something woman with the life experience of a grandmother. Samantha nails this dichotomy. In a physiotherapy clinic where she would otherwise have moved around carefully, she now runs, bends with ease and mocks an elderly gentleman who needs help to walk. It’s a razor’s edge situation, where you have to deliver the fun element without being condescending. Samantha manages it beautifully, upping her game with an impish look and a mild gait that remains from her 70-year-old self. This film is Samantha’s way of telling filmmakers that she’s game for more challenges.
The styling is a nod to the 50s and 60s, and the vintage mood is accentuated by the production design (Jayashree Lakshmi Narayanan), cinematography (Richard Prasad) and music (Mickey Meyer).
Back to Swati, who relives her maiden dreams of being a singer and joins her grandson’s band. As she revels in the physicality of being young and carefree, someone who’s just slightly older to her grandson feels drawn to her. Naga Shourya plays this part with suaveness and restraint. The dating portions are hilarious, given Swati’s dichotomy of being young with grandmotherly instincts. But make no mistake, she hasn’t lost her sting. The grocery store scene where she insensitively takes off on a woman for buying formula feed is a reminder of that.
There are plenty of supporting characters. Veterans like Rao Ramesh, Rajendra Prasad and Pragati fit in aptly into their parts, and there are other notable performers like Aneesha Dama as the granddaughter, Teja Sajja as the grandson and Sunaina who plays a fun part as Rajendra Prasad’s daughter. Urvashi appears in a brief role that’s a telling statement of the treatment meted out to some elders by their children. In her limited screen time, Lakshmi shows why no one else could have played Baby better.
Oh! Baby is a fun ode to the complexities that make up our elders. It’s an acknowledgement of their rough rides as much as it is about learning to count your blessings.
Take your grandparents and parents along for the film.
COMMents
SHARE