Movie Reviews

 

It is not surprising that Rs.400 crores has been pumped into making another mediocre overblown action film with an infallible 'mass' hero. Perhaps it is also not surprising that a large swathe of the audience will fall for this crude blockbuster. I had not seen Pushpa 1 (lucky me) but was keen to catch up on the film market having been out of action for a while. Of two things now you can be sure - 1. I'd suggest you save your money for a better film, and 2. Rampaging action horses cannot drag me to  Pushpa 3. 

 

Allu Arjun and Rashmika Mandanna make a good onscreen pair and it is nice to watch their naughty chemistry - it is just a shame neither of them had the good sense to enlist a better script and a better director. The story is the same done-to-death masala yarn of a central male figure who is a darling of the masses, who bashes up a hundred baddies with moves which would give Matrix Neo a complex. His various enemies can only dream of killing him, and he will not die of boredom, because faintly interesting incidents and pure trash keep happening by turns. Could the treatment here actually be different, and are there subtle layers of interest sitting slyly underneath the dross, a film critic may ask. Dream on, there are no such niceties here. 

 

 In this Kantara KGF clone, sandalwood smuggler Pushpa lives with his wife and mother in a spacious multi-colour mansion in Chittoor district. Pissed off that the Chief Minister has dissed him in a meeting, Pushpa reprises the nation's proud history of horse-trading MLAs (casually bought for crores of rupees) so that he can single-handedly install a new Chief Minister of his choice. Rs.100 crore is quoted as the figure of installing a new Chief Minister, and Pushpa, being the consummate businessman, offers to get the job done for just Rs 500 crore. 

 

What remains now is the petty business of selling 2000 tons of sandalwood by hoodwinking a police inspector (Fahadh Faasil in a clownish role that would have vastly benefited from a sharper, more serious edge). Fighting caste prejudice, and saving a girl who is hounded by a gang of rapists, rounds out this installment's agenda.

 

The sandalwood smuggling master-plan is the one stretch where the movie puts on its thinking cap. Rashmika Mandanna is in fabulous form, and her verbal lashing out in defense of her Srivalli's brave husband outclasses the physical thrashing he gives to lechers in public. These are the movie's few truly good moments

 

For a mass movie, this one truly puts the wife on a pedestal and does a service by not relegating the wife to being wallpaper. When Pushpa is told he will not prosper by listening to his wife Srivalli, that is the one thing that truly rankles him. Srivalli's fertile libido is freely shown - on multiple occasions, she slyly pulls Pushpa in, citing her 'feelings', and poor Pushpa, a man of many sacrifices, has to give in and get his occasion shirt crumpled in the process. When her mobility is not the greatest, he picks her up, carries her into the bathroom and deposits her on the commode seat. 

 

For what is an action-oriented movie, the overblown action is simply not convincing. We know we are not watching a superhero movie, like India's own spectacular 'Minnal Murali'. There is no effort here for realistic action better suited to the actual film, like what you see in 'Captain Prabhakaran', '36th Chamber of Shaolin' or this year's 'KILL'. Pushpa just mows down an army of men with outlandish moves that does not draw in the audience, and there is no element of danger or risk or vulnerability which actually makes us fear for the hero.

 

I do not mind well-made masala movies, but these lavishly funded multi crore flicks, whether it's this one, or this year's 'Kalki 2898', are complacently indulgent, semi-lazily constructed pictures which draw upon desperate fanboys and gals to rake in their cash. They are made by film-makers who are not in command of their material and craft, and don't have the chops to take their films truly international. 

 

Pushpa 2 lacks memorable villains who can match Pushpa's superhero rampage. Songs by noted composer Devi Sri Prasad are lackluster.The demi-god body possession of 'Kantara' is handily borrowed to milk more of the audience-drawing potential there. But there is very little genuine social commentary. When Pushpa laments that he would rather be a father to a girl than a boy, because she would acquire better social cache through her husband, the real pathos there cannot be felt because this is a film that runs like a bulldozer rather than a cart that earns its turns. 

 

 

UPN

 

 

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