Paa and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (below)

A B Corp Ltd and Reliance Big Pictures took something of a risk on Tuesday by showing Paa to journalists in London although it has been normal Bollywood practice not to screen previews for fear of harsh reviews leaving a movie dead in the water ahead of its general release.

In this case, the producers need not have worried. Judging by the immediate “buzz” from 50 or so journalists, some of them non-Indian, who saw Paa in the Court Kempinski Hotel, the movie ought — and deserves — to do well.

Although it is getting a worldwide release on December 4, with 700 prints to be spread across India, UK, US, Canada, UAE, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and other territories, the movie is probably one essentially for metro audiences because of the significant amount of English dialogue spoken.

Paa is based on the curious case of Amitabh Bachchan, an actor who is 67 but ages backwards to play Auro, a schoolboy aged 12 at a posh English medium school in Mumbai.

Auro suffers from progeria, a rare genetic disease which causes premature and accelerated ageing so that a boy of 12 has the body of a man of 80. Only rarely do those with the disease live beyond 13 because the deteriorating heart, kidney, liver and other functions of the body make them fatally vulnerable to infections. But inside the ancient body there is trapped the mind of a spirited boy of 12.

R. (“Balki”) Balakrishnan, the film’s director, has insisted in interviews that he did not rip off the Hollywood film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in which a heavily-made up Brad Pitt plays a man born in his eighties who ages backwards to become younger and younger. The Hollywood film, which got Oscars for Art Direction, Visual Effect and Make up in February this year but was kept out of the main categories by the rampant Slumdog Millionaire, is based loosely on a short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Writing in 1922, the author clearly anticipated the script Balki would come up with nearly nine decades later in yet another example of Hollywood ripping off Bollywood.

According to Balki, he conceived of the idea after observing the playful father-son “reverse relationship” between Amitabh and Abhishek. He then decided to cast Abhishek as the father, Amol Arte, a principled 34-year-old MP who genuinely wants better housing conditions for slum dwellers and hence gets into trouble with corrupt politicians.

The flashback takes audiences to Cambridge, where Amol meets and falls in love with a fellow undergraduate, Vidya (beautifully played by the beautiful Vidya Balan), but when she falls pregnant, he urges her to have an abortion. Hurt, she promises she will do nothing to hinder his political ambitions which he assumes to be her agreement to get rid of the baby.

Paa begins with Auro, who is now 12 years old. When Arte hands Auro an award as chief guest at the school prize giving, he does so without realising he is doing so to his own son. Vidya, by now a busy gynaecologist, kept the baby after being encouraged to do so by her own forward-thinking mother and brought him up to be as normal a child as possible given his handicaps.

Amitabh Bachchan has proved his critics wrong with Paa. He reveals he can act so long as he is not playing Amitabh Bachchan. He is excellent as a precocious 12-year-old who is popular with his school mates because he is both wise and has a sense of humour.

Abhishek, understated in his role, and Vidya Balan are excellent, too, as this film takes Bollywood into uncharted territory. Among its saving graces is that it has no “song & dance” nor gratuitous night club scenes.

Abhishek was right when he told an interviewer: “Paa is not a film about progeria. It is a happy film about a father and his son and the sweet moments that they share.”

However, Bachchan senior, who looks nothing like his usual self — only occasionally, the look in his eyes is familiar — has done well to provide a sympathetic portrayal of a boy who knows he is doomed but is still determined to enjoy what little time he has left. In that sense, the film is life affirming.

Abhishek has disclosed: “There is a family in Calcutta where three children suffer from progeria syndrome. But Balki did not want us to meet them and discuss their condition because it would have been very insensitive and intrusive.” After Paa, though, the family should risk coming forward in the confident knowledge its problems will probably find understanding with the wider public.

When it comes to movie making, big is not necessarily better. However, on the evidence of Paa, Anil Ambani’s Reliance Big Pictures, which has signed deals with a number of Indian directors and several Hollywood production houses run by the likes of Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey, George Clooney and Brad Pitt, can look to the future with considerable optimism.