A friend asked me, “If Amitabh Bachchan was to die in the movie, would you cry?”

“No Way” was my prompt reply as, it seemed to me then,  she had challenged my masculinity.

As much as I had assumed my givens for the movie, I knew that it would take a mesmerising performance from the characters to bring out a a few sniffs from me, and so at a houseful show I sat down intently to watch what Paa had to offer.

‘PAA – A very rare father-son son-father story’ portrays the lead character Auro (Amitabh Bachchan) as suffering from an extremely rare and severe genetic disorder called ‘Progeria’. The probability of occurrence of Progeria is one in eight million at live births. Progeria is a disorder where the aspects of ageing of the individual are manifested rapidly from an early age. Auro, a kid aged 12, looking like a man in his 70’s and 80’s, has a maximum of an year at hand to survive due to the accelerated genetic mutation that causes his physical condition to be like that of a man in his 70’s and 80’s too

Auro’s ageing in the movie, however, hasn’t been exploited to the extent it could have been, and is no match to the much hyped comparison with Benjamin Button (played by the extremely talented Brad Pitt) in last year’s Oscar winning movie “The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button”, and the ageing is just clichéd by a dwarfed Auro in a song.

Amitabh Bachchan does manage to do a convincing job of playing a 12 year old from the resources he could garner from his own production house. The prosthetic make up by Christien Tinsley and Dominie Till are Momentarily convincing, as there aren’t many variations or expressions to offer. Writer and Director R. Balki is courageous and tackles a tough topic in only his second outing as a director (his first was Cheeni Kum, also with Amitabh Bachchan).

The story though could have done away with additional footage given to the character of Amol Arte (Abhishek Bachchan) who looks a spitting image of Sachin Pilot (Member of Parliament). Abhishek is rather downplayed by the unwanted tangent of new age politics. Vidya Balan (Vidhya Kumari) is brilliantly cast, and styled as a doctor and mother of Auro. She delivers a good performance.

Music Director Ilaiyaraaja boringly uses the same piece of symphony throughout the movie, with the lyrics of Swanand Kirkire coming as a welcome relief. The movie is definitely worth a watch, even if it is just for the efforts that has been put in by the crew in bringing a fairly informational piece to the audience. The second half of the movie is painstakingly elongated by the crying and dying all over.

At the end of the movie, I did manage to hold on to my masculinity but I can’t say the same for the 20 something guy, who cried through the last 15 minutes on his girlfriend’s shoulder.