Zero review: The endearing Bauua Singh and a good script make it click

Shah Rukh Khan does it again. After the debacle of Jab Harry Met Sejal, he has bounced back with Zero aka Bauua Singh. And yet again, it's proved that if the script and characterisation is in place, SRK can do wonders on screen.

Ah but well, do not expect a lot. It’s after all a typical Hindi film love story. Though, the hero has an ethereal capability to make stars fall, he is a character ridden with follies. Shah Rukh has this knack for selecting almost anti hero characters and he did it again. But this character is endearing despite his follies. He has this curious and undying spirit of having fun at his own expense and that’s how he survives all the humiliation he receives for being a dwarf.

That's characteristic of Aanand L Rai, he works hard on dialogues and characters. The story unfolds slowly but comically. There's this sense of incompleteness in its characters, which in fact is common to all of us.

But of course there's a story. There's this vertically challenged man whose affluent father is ashamed of him. Even though humiliated and insulted, Bauua Singh is full of life and dreams and compensates for his height by squandering his father's money. He meets and woos and leaves at the altar a reputed young scientist who suffers from cerebral palsy.

He dreams of the glamorous star Babita Singh, who is cheated in love, manages to stay with her for a while. But then he realises his mistake and goes back to his love but has to travel to mars to win her back! A little too romantic and bizarre, isn’t it? But that’s the quality of Aanand Rai’s films.

But the film has its weaknesses too. Anushka Sharma as a scientist with a disability is weak though she has tried hard. The film is a little slow. Of course, it runs like a dream, but slackens at places. Aanand L Rai has his favourite Madhavan too in a cameo.

Portraying Shah Rukh as a dwarf must have been a cinematic challenge. The director has successfully dealt with it.

Zeeshan Ayub is perfect as Bauua Singh’s almost blind friend. The music is alright though sounds repetitive except one song ‘Roz Roz Tanha’.

One thing here is worth mentioning—have our Hindi films absolutely abandoned the sweetness of a-little-formal-little-casual ‘Tum’ and accepted the casual careless ‘tuu’ as an address in dialogues? It sounds well, a little strange. Even the guys from Meerut also use ‘tum’.

As a whole, the film is interesting with some good desi Merathiya dialogues which well, in the beginning doesn’t seem to suit the suave SRK’s mouth but in the course of the film, one tends to like.

It’s a feel-good rom com telling us that we all are incomplete in one way or another. Love makes us complete and brings out the hero in the most flawed ones too. A good one time watch.