It is
Another badly processed clone of the new genre called ‘Magadheera’; since we’ve over exhausted our previous retarded brainchild of factionism and guess what, the word ‘factionism’ doesn’t exist. We made that up too. Brilliant aren’t we.
Plot
There’s a place which needs a protector, one guy is chosen and he’s got muscles, a designer sword, bad pronunciation, a dumb female companion with whom he can cut to sets whenever she looks at him with lustful eyes and can kill hundreds of humans at every given opportunity. Sounds similar?
But, the makers claim it to be different this way : The Badrinath temple in Kashmir needs a protector since foreigners over the years have been looting India’s precious temples. That happens to be Badri (Allu Arjun) and he’s so ever devoted to his temple and his master (Prakash Raj). The atheist Alakananda (Tammana) visits the temple with her grandfather and because of circumstances she falls in love with the temple protector.
There are circumstances like the usual Vinayak film back in Andhra Pradesh, you know the drill – someone killed or betrayed someone’s trust and hence there are goons, big houses with pools and loud characters all over the place. The central conflict is for Badri to decide whether he wants to become the next Big Guy of the temple succeeding Prakash Raj and vowing to bachelorhood or to run away with Tammana and banished forever to dance on badly constructed sets.
Major influence or fickle minds?
We see a lot of directors (the bigger ones) from the industry who have been taken captive by the Magadheera hype and are obsessed with repeating the feat. If Magadheera was really that classic of a film from which our makers aren’t able to break free from, that’s excusable. But, the influence itself is a mediocre film with a few minutes of good special effects (great special effects, considering the budget on which it was made) which compensate for the bad acting.
So, fickle uneducated minds should be the answer.
When do you know something’s wrong?
When a warrior/protector of a historical temple in Kashmir is wearing a 30 rupee locket reading Om, you sense that there’s something wrong.
When a dancer as good as Arjun is given moves that make him look like a new producer’s son dancing on badly lit sets, you know for sure that there’s something wrong.
And when Tammana dressed like Britney Spears is lip syncing lines such as "Nee gunde loni gadi lone digi unta…". That is when you confirm that something’s terribly wrong. Not that any of these primitive moves are new and out of blue, but, they do churn up the insides every time.
Actors
Allu Arjun had to work with a bad costume designer, routine lines and bad scenes. All these put together with Arjun’s extreme effort to mouth the slightly difficult words and punch lines, all in all you either laugh at him or feel sorry for someone who can act.
Vinayak had blatantly agreed that they bring in the females for the songs, that sort of frees me of the need to write about Tamanna’s performance. You can say that she cannot dance too.
There’s no such thing as Prakash Raj not doing well, and he holds true to that.
Verdict
Say you pay someone a lot of money to cook you a dish and ‘the someone’ messes it up, badly. You cannot pretend to like it and eat the entire dish and also smile at ‘the someone’ in approval. Respect yourself and your money. Pay for intelligence and art, not for some dude whose only idea of a big budget film is bringing in innumerable cars, choppers and goons.
