There is a dire need for the revival of comedy in Tamil cinema. And family entertainers too, for that matter, without having to employ sentiments or humour that shame other characters excessively to evoke laughter. But it only feels like the industry is driving back to previous decades to exhume lost humour. Baby and Baby has an interesting story at its disposal, but unfortunately, it succumbs to this worn-out formula.

Cast: Jai, Yogi Babu, Sathyaraj, Pragya Nagra, Redin Kingsley, Rajendran, Anandaraj, Ilavarasu, Singampuli and Sriman

Director: Prathap

The film begins its central conflict within the first half an hour. And it is safe to say that, by the same time, you decide to throw logic out of the window as well. Two babies who wear the same outfit are swapped unknowingly at an airport and are taken in different directions. It takes well over an hour (by their time) for the two couples to realise that they don’t have their own children on the aeroplanes. The ensuing chaos surrounding the crisis and their mission to reunite each other's babies with their respective parents, Shiva (Jai) and Guna (Yogi Babu), forms the rest of the story.

Throughout the journey, Baby and Baby functions like a soap opera in its structure, with its dramatic flashbacks, sudden zoom-ins and slow motions, and its characters almost on the verge of crying or would kill someone at the snap of a finger. The parents are patriarchs who are controlling and perpetuating gender biases, obsessed with the gender of their heirs and the prosperity they would provide to the family. 

You enjoy this drama for a while, but it gets saturated too easily, too fast. Especially when you see Manikkam (Sriman) looking at the mirror and swearing to avenge Mahalingam (Sathyaraj) for insulting him in the most dramatic way possible. The writing is also inconsistent throughout the runtime and the lip-sync issues are on the face. Take Jai’s character Shiva, for example. He gets hero elevation moments in the most random of scenes. Even the dance numbers are choreographed in an amateurish way.

Despite having an unoriginal story, the makers could have capitalised on the comedy-drama in a unique way. Instead, we receive the old story in a much older wrapping. The makers are well aware that they are crafting a story that is way over the top, and Tamil cinema has often benefitted from these side characters in a way that has assisted the story even when the plot and its characters are running around aimlessly. This may have worked partially in favour of the recent hit Madha Gaja Raja. However, in its pursuit to create back-to-back laughs, many one-liners and stretches in Baby and Baby are either thrust forcefully or tumble off into oblivion. There are a few guffaws, like a brilliant stretch involving Redin Kingsley’s character as Inspector Kuzhanthaivelu and the wordplay around his name itself which adds on to the existing conundrum, but the other slapstick scenes neither substantially build on the story nor provide quality comedic relief. At one point, I stopped caring about what these characters intended to do in the first place and on whose side they were on as they wander around in all spectrums of absurdity.

Baby and Baby has no specific villain, but when Anandaraj as Rajan dons his negative character coat once again for a second and says to Dhayalan (Nizhalgal Ravi), “Naan unna machan mari ila, magan mari pathukitten la nu dhane sollaporeenga, idhellam romba pazhasu” (You are going to say, 'I haven't treated you like a brother-in-law but rather like my own son,' right? This is too old). I was wondering if it was aimed at the audience as the film was indeed a trip back to the 90s, just not in the way it was intended to be.