Piku ****
Dir:Shoojit Sircar

Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, Irrfan Khan, Moushami Chatterjee

Director Shoojit Sircar and writer Juhi Chaturvedi delivered a superb comedy drama in 2012’s Vicky Donor, a movie which ostensibly milked the subject of childlessness, sperm donation and artificial insemination for laughs but also managed to touch upon other topics like inter-ethnic marriage as well. It also gave us some pretty memorable yet believable characters.

With Piku, the writer and director score again. Bowel movements (believe it or not) drive the plot but the real subject is people. Bhashkor (Amitabh Bachchan) and Piku (Deepika Padukone) are a Delhi-based Bengali father-daughter duo. He is obsessed with the state of his digestive tract and the quality of his stool and she has to manage her life and work around his cantankerous nature and irrational demands. Moushami Chatterjee is Piku’s garrulous, thrice-married aunt and Irrfan Khan is Rana Chowdhary who, through a series of events, becomes the designated driver on Bhashkor and Piku’s road trip from Delhi to Calcutta. Also on hand are the family doctor (Raghuvir Yadav) and Piku’s colleague and best friend (Jisshu Sengupta) to provide help and some kindly words of advice from time to time.

Sircar and Chaturvedi manage to deliver some big laughs along the way but also sensitively touch upon the often-complex relationships between children and parents. The characters are fully realised, complicated, unique, and believably capricious. The cast doesn’t drop the ball either with Bachchan delivering his most unmannered performance in ages and Deepika showing that she continues to develop and mature as an actress with yet another strong, natural performance. Moushami Chatterjee is delightful (I wish her screen appearances weren’t as sporadic as they have been in the last few years) and Irrfan Khan also delivers one of his most unaffected, less twitchy roles.

This one will make you smile and gently move you. Watch it.

Cut to chase: Understated, understanding and occasionally uproarious.

Kmumtaz1@hotmail.com; Twitter: @KhusroMumtaz