Review Round-Up: ‘Barfi!’ Charms

This week’s major Bollywood release, “Barfi!,” stars Ranbir Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra in unusual roles: both suffer from disabilities. The film sees Mr. Kapoor as Barfi, who is deaf and mute, and Ms. Chopra as Jhilmil, who is autistic.
A love story of sorts, the film also stars Ileana D’Cruz as Shruti.
Set between the 1970s and he present day in Darjeeling and Kolkata, Barfi!, directed by Anurag Basu, was positively received by critics.
Here is what some of them had to say about it.
Bollywood critic Taran Adarsh, who gave the movie four stars out of five, compared Barfi! to the Oscar-winning Italian movie “Life is Beautiful”: “That film advocated the fact that one should savor every moment. Similarly, BARFI! notifies you to relish life and live it king-size.”
He writes that the film “shatters the myth” that people with disability have a “gloomy and grief stricken life.”
He praised Pritam Chakraborty, the film’s music director, for his “sweet and appealing”  music, which is an integral part of the film as it makes up for the absence of dialogues between Barfi and Jhilmil.
However, he found that “like most Hindi movies, this one is essentially a love story that throws the spotlight on the happy-go-lucky Barfi and his romances, first with the classy Shruti and later, with an autistic girl, Jhilmil.
Mr. Adarsh also questioned whether Indian audiences would like the film, as it’s not typical Bollywood: “The film is hugely experimental from the commercial point of view.”
In a Yahoo YHOO +1.06% review, Kunal Guha gives a thumbs up to Barfi, a character he describes as “Chaplin meets Mr. Bean meets Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.”
He was impressed with both Mr. Kapoor’s and Ms. Chopra’s performances: “Ranbir manages to convey a diversity of moods wordlessly and doesn’t resort to hamming which was very possible here, considering he was left to play dumb charades through the film. Even Priyanka Chopra pulls off her character with just the right amount of abnormality, easily and effectively.
What Mr. Guha liked most about the movie what its cinematography: “Almost every frame is a picture postcard,” he says.
In a Filmfare review, Rachit Gupta describes Barfi! as the kind of film “that can make you smile and make you cry in the same scene.” He praised all three lead actors, saying their performance “infiltrate the depths of your emotions.”
He was most impressed with Priyanka Chopra: “She looks her part and her rendition of an autistic character is by far the best representation of this condition” in Indian cinema.
Gaurav Malani of the Times of India, writes that “Barfi has the potential to make the stonehearted go soggy-eyed with its sheer sensitivity and the capability to make even cynics open up to its warmth.” He singles out Mr. Kapoor, who “without a single line to mouth… expresses much more than any average actor could even dream of. The actor oozes of such continual charm that you can’t help but fall in love with him.”
While he noted the storyline is not particularly inventive – it’s a love triangle, after all – Mr. Malani found that Mr. Basu’s “non-linear storytelling pattern” means viewers won’t find it predictable.
“It’s Anurag Basu’s delicate handling of the narrative that takes the film to an altogether different level,” he said.
A review by Roshni Devi in Koimoi also praises Mr. Basu’s storytelling. “He builds the characters so finely that you come to love each and every one of them by the end of the movie,” she says. However, she also adds the movie “stretches a bit” and the plot gets “convoluted” because of the non-linear story pattern.
Ms. Devi felt the character of Shruti, played by Ms. D’Cruz, could have been “developed better.” Giving the movie three and a half stars out of five, she says it is “really worth a watch.”
Raja Sen of Rediff was less enthusiastic. “A well-crafted script with an intriguing back-and-forth narrative … Barfi! intrigues, right to the point somewhere down the middle, when it becomes more than apparent exactly what the film’s story is, after which all goes south, he writes.  “The film’s naïveté starts to wear thin, previously cast spells now appearing repetitive as the movie tragically falls into the very traps of mawkishness and manipulation it avoids so, so adroitly through the start,” Mr. Sen adds.
But Mr. Sen praised the performance of all the main characters, especially Mr. Kapoor’s: “Barfi’s as irresistible as they come. Played by Ranbir Kapoor with that marvellous abandon which is increasingly marking him out to be a truly special leading man — his shoulders well outgrowing those of (all) his A-list peers and rubbing now alongside actual acting heavyweights — his Barfi is a treat, a bushy-tailed hero with a highly infectious spring in his step.”