Sanal (Nivin Pauly) works as an assistant at the Good Shepherd Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram, where a three-day-old baby has gone missing. Although SI Rakesh Narayanan (Abhimanyu Shammy Thilakan) and his team spring into action immediately, they are unable to carry out an extensive city-wide sniffing operation because many officers are busy as they are assigned to an event that the chief minister will attend. During the investigation and based on Sanal’s statement, they discover that a woman in a burqa kidnapped the child, born to young parents in their early 20s. However, as the investigation progresses, Sanal becomes a suspect and brothers Rithu (Lijomol) and Rishi (Sangeeth Prathap) also get caught in the web as they have some secrets to hide. In the midst of all this, two questions haunt the police: where is the girl and why isn’t her family showing much interest in finding her?

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The superficiality of director Arun Varma’s Baby Girl script is evident from the start, as it is marred by convenient plot devices and a tendency to stretch things beyond the limit. Making one feel as if Bobby and Sanjay haven’t spent a moment coming up with a unique modus operandi for the kidnapper, or at least something that isn’t extremely trite, the character is conveniently clad in a burqa here.

Soon, we also see Sanal expressing suspicions about this person to the police. But how or why did he feel this way, even though he only saw them in passing near the elevator? Even in the future, the film does not portray him as an extremely attentive person; If anything, he describes his character as the opposite. Therefore, the description only makes one feel that the writers are implying that we should start looking with suspicion at every burqa-clad person from now on, thus fueling already incendiary rhetoric against Muslims, particularly women, in public.

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Although the entire story takes place in one day, much like the screenwriting duo’s groundbreaking road thriller Traffic (2011), Bobby and Sanjay sadly fail to offer the story any emotional weight or keep the audience on the edge of their seats, eagerly waiting to see how it all turns out in the end. The softness of each individual moment is also evident in the overall story, mainly because we never feel like the stakes are high or experience any emotional resonance with the story.

While Rithu and Rishi’s track had potential for this, Bobby and Sanjay never managed to develop it properly, leaving the entire episode purely focused on performance. Even an intermediate turn, reminiscent of mamootty The Truth (1998) fails to land because it is too obvious from the beginning. What makes it even worse is that the writers constantly shift focus to Sanal, whose track lacks any intrigue or drama. It is doubtful that the story would have been different if Sanal had not been a part of it.

Abhimanyu Thilakan, Nivin Pauly and Lijomol in Baby Girl.

Not only do Bobby and Sanjay fail to raise the stakes, they also fail to ensure adequate character development or anchor the narrative firmly anywhere, unlike their previous works such as Notebook (2006), Ayalum Njanum Thammil (2012), and even Bombay Police (2013) to some extent. In fact, Baby Girl does not capture us even as her first film, Ente Veedu Appuvinteyum (2003), did. Even Sanal’s character, despite much of the film focusing on him, is underdeveloped, preventing him from forming an emotional connection with the film. Although the duo’s writings have been steadily declining since Uyare (2019) and especially since One (2021) onwards, this is a new low for Bobby and Sanjay after Casanova (2012).

What Baby Girl also lacks is the vision of an incisive director like (late) Rajesh Pillaithe director of Traffic, who could understand the soul of a Bobby-Sanjay script and elevate it with his cinematic skills. Unfortunately, director Arun Varma never manages to make up for the script’s shortcomings and at times Baby Girl even comes across as a mediocre soap opera.

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Surprisingly, there were moments when I felt a sense of déjà vu, as if I were looking Mohanlal 2009’s Bhagavan Abomination again, although the two films share no direct similarities beyond the fact that they both revolve around newborns and take place in a hospital in the span of a few hours. While Baby Girl isn’t as bad as Bhagavan, it certainly had the potential to be, but it’s saved by just a hair, thanks to the creators for finally finishing the movie, albeit only after giving a couple of pointless and uninteresting false endings.

While Lijomol gives a serviceable performance, Nivin Pauly is completely wasted in a role that didn’t require an actor (or star) of his caliber. What was Abhimanyu Thilakan trying to do in the film? I have no idea. Although Sangeeth Prathap completely disappoints, particularly with his performative accent, it never becomes the film’s biggest flaw at any point. Although Sam CS’s music works at certain points, it is uneven throughout the film.

Baby Girl movie cast: Nivin Pauly, Lijomol, Sangeeth Prathap, Abhimanyu Thilakan
Director of the movie Baby Girl: Arun Varma
Baby Girl Movie Rating: 1.5 stars