When you look at the whole structure of Baby Girl, the new Arun Varma movie written by Bobby Sanjay, the aspiration is definitely to create something that will have the same excitement we felt around the first production of Listin Stephen, Traffic. The numerous characters, the way the interval block is set up, the character arcs, and the eventual “humanity” element are all making it somewhat of a spiritual sequel to Traffic. I mean, if Bobby Sanjay writes one more story that happens in a span of 12 or 24 hours, it can be called their emergency trilogy. The structure of the story in the initial patches is exciting, as we want to see how things evolve into something significant. But as the story progresses, everything starts to feel very contrived, and most of the elements in the screenplay become predictable. Thus, Baby Girl ends up being a thriller that got inferior treatment.
Good Shepherd Hospital in Trivandrum faces a crisis scenario when a newborn girl went missing. The available police force rushed to the scene to identify the culprit, and with the help of attendant Sanal, they were able to mark the suspect. But when the investigation hits a roadblock, things go against Sanal, and what we see here are the parallel efforts of the police and Sanal to find the baby.
There is no beating around the bush happening here. From the word go, we are into the plot, and the action begins. Bobby and Sanjay are pretty much using those areas to document the practical circumstances inside the hospital and also in policing. The problem with the movie in terms of writing is the predictability. The haste with which we are shown the first breakthrough in the investigation makes it very obvious what will happen to that development. The interval block in the movie happens after establishing the main characters, and it sort of reminded me of Traffic in essence. In terms of predictability, it was the second half that disappointed more. The exposure to various thrillers is making the audience much more intelligent, and when they watch a movie, they are trying to predict who would have committed the crime. I felt the writing clearly underestimated the viewers in that aspect, as some of the surprise character revealings were easily predictable.
How you present a sequence in a realistic way or tweak a scene to get the best out of an actor has to do with the direction. It felt like Arun Varma couldn’t really identify the stiffness or cliches in the screenplay. There is a moment in the movie where Nivin Pauly’s Sanal is telling his wife why he needs to solve this case. The character arc had similarities with Traffic’s Sudevan, played by Sreenivasan. But the dramatic syntax of that dialogue just falls flat. And there are moments in the second half where we can see this woman empowering track. It is followed by an exhausting chase sequence featuring Sangeeth Prathap, and none of it landed smoothly. You could clearly see they were trying to make these bumper-sticker statements rather than creating an organic thriller. Considering the typical structure of our movies, what would eventually happen is a given, and because of that, certain twists towards the end just didn’t create any excitement.
Nivin Pauly is more like a poster boy for this movie. His screen time in the film is very little, and since it is scattered all over, it would feel like he is there for a major part. As I said, when he tries to say some of these dramatic dialogues about proving himself, the stiff dialogue delivery takes away the life from those moments. Lijomol Jose brought a lot of authenticity to the angst of the character she plays in this movie. Sangeeth Prathap, who has been doing humor-oriented characters in his filmography, gets a character that tests his potential in playing a character in a different zone. His performance was really good, and my favorite bit was the final phone conversation. Abhimanyu S Thilakan, the Anoop Menon of this Traffic, has what it takes to look like a police officer, and he obviously has the advantage of having that sound. But when it comes to giving modulation to dialogues, he is faltering. There was a bit where he was saying at least 5 lines continuously, and each one had the same dialogue modulation graph.
If your idea of approaching a thriller is based on emotions and the message it conveys, Baby Girl might feel like a movie with good intentions. But if you are looking for unpredictability and efforts to present something fresh, this one is a major let-down. There are two occasions in the movie where they placed this misdirection tactic very effectively. Since the other scripting elements around those two moments were underwhelming, one couldn’t fully feel the cinematic high around those moments.
