Vidya Balan and Abhishek Bachchan promote Paa as a couple
Auro, a 13-year-old genetically disordered child, suffering from progeria, contentedly lives with his mother and grandmother. Life gets somewhat complicated when a politician visits his school and Auro discovers the new age neta is actually his dad. Does the estranged family come together? It's not any and every 67-year-old actor who can enter the shoes of a pre-adolescent, without looking and sounding awkward and silly. Amitabh Bachchan not only captures the essence of the gawky, geeky, god-he's-different teenager with great skill, he creates a whole new benchmark for an actor to experiment, innovate ad reinvent himself when the career graph seems to plateau. The actor looks different (almost unrecognisable as ET's country cousin), talks different (with a slight nasal twang), moves different (an awkward shuffle that breaks into the Auro dance) and emotes different (mostly through his be-spectacled eyes). End result? Paa is an experience that works, only because it is so different. The film opens with a somewhat static and diffused first half that lights up intermittently, when Auro is around. Wonder why it takes so long to come to the point....Having been given an award in school by the young, upcoming, friendly neighbourhood neta (Abhishek Bachchan), Auro sends single mom, Vidya Balan into flashback mode. That's because the neta fathered her child and left her to tackle the unwanted pregnancy because he wanted to change the world. Vidya, the archetypal woman of ...