BAHUBALI- THE BEGINNING: The Grand & Glorious ‘Game of Throne’, Rajamouli Style! [3.5/5]

Can you watch a film just for its flawless brilliance at technical fronts for like 3 hours? Why not? If the vision, passion and implementation are guided by none other than one of most imaginative filmmakers in India today Mr. S S Rajamouli, it doesn’t really look or feel a hard task. Though the plot sounds submissive to the south Indian emotions at its purest form and doesn’t quite amaze you like the filmmaker’s previous best EEGA in which he dares us to feel for a fly seeking vengeance for its murder in past life, BAHUBALI- THE BEGINNING succeeds to surprise you with its grandeur scale, breathtaking visuals, high-octane drama and a cinematic excellence mostly achieved in VFX technology. This is definitely something you have never seen before on Indian screen, and I am vouching mostly for the visual effect parts.

If you have crossed the 30th milestone of your life and could remember your parents/grandparents telling you the bedtime-stories that always had same starting line as ‘once upon a time, there was a king…’; the plot of BAHUBALI- THE BEGINNING will never look an extraterrestrial to you. Shiva [Prabhas] is a strong young man with miraculous powers raised by a tribal family. His real identity is under-wrap till he meets the love of his life Avanthika [Tamannaah] and decides to help her in a rescue-mission. The twists in the tale aren’t much unseen but the way they drop their curtains are very much dramatic and dynamic. A mother is waiting in custody for his son to come and set her free. The people of a territory are waiting for their savior in shining armor to save them from the evil forces. And there lies the legend of love, hope, betrayal and valor!

Rajamauli makes sure every frame of the film tempts your eyes with spectacularly larger-than-life visuals painted beautifully on screen. Be it the hike on the invincible waterfall, lifting up the gigantic Shiva Linga or the war-sequence in the finale; you can’t hold yourself being an admirer of Rajamouli’s amazing visualization and the art & craft to bring one’s dream out in reality with so much confidence. The landscape of a fictional kingdom Mahishmati is created in great details. Watching this film could lure the outsiders from different parts of the world to explore the outskirts of our beautiful country but only to find a much degraded, tainted and spoiled ruins with packaged food wrappers flying here and those passionate ‘love-confessions’ written there on the walls.

Prabhas is the second best thing happened to BAHUBALI- THE BEGINNING, first being the visual effects of course. The stature, strength and swag he brings with him on screen are matchless. He is fiery and could switch well between the emotional and the action scenes. Rana Daggubati is perfectly cast as the mean, mighty and scheming counterpart to Prabhas. Tamannaah and Anushka Shetty hardly impress. Ramya Krishnan is superb and I love the way she walks into frames like a tigress. She sure hasn’t lost the sparks in her beauty. Sudeep makes a quick appearance with a promise to be back in the second part.  

Overall, BAHUBALI- THE BEGINNING is a film best celebrated for one man’s passion to dream beyond boundaries and the biggest accomplishment achieved by the Indian cinema in terms of visual effects and graphics. The conventional content and overtly melodramatic emotions may make you cringe in your seats for more than a couple of times but I think you should never ask yourself the question I asked at the very start in this write-up. Watch it, at least once; as our traditional story-telling takes another leap. [3.5/5]                        

ENTERTAINMENT: A new low in entertainment! Lackluster comedy of absurdity!! [1.5/5]

Do not judge a book by its cover and a film by its title, especially if it stars Akshay Kumar. Writer duo Sajid-Farhad’s first outing in direction ENTERTAINMENT sees a new low in the promised territory. With humor largely based on word-play one liners, plot that hardly believes in being logical and performances having tough time to justify even calling them one; it is just another slap-stick, mindless & lackluster comedy of absurdity Akshay Kumar is known to be a master of in recent past. Of course, a lovely addition of a cute dog in the plot is something new & unusual from his rests but that’s it.

Sounding like a film funded and supported by Maneka Gandhi- the famous animal rights activist, ENTERTAINMENT sets a new benchmark in bromance with Akshay Kumar bonding with a rich & wealthy dog smart enough to read books and acts accordingly to defend itself. In a very much Bollywood fashion, Akhil Lokhande [Played by Khiladi Kumar] comes to know of his real father being a Diamond King in Bangkok but till the time he could reach to claim his dead father’s 3000 Cr Empire, a dog named Entertainment has been given all of it in his last will. Rest is how this loyal friend of man wins hearts and after several failed attempts of Akhil trying to kill the dog, the both bonds like any other melodramatic affiliation Bollywood could come up the best.

Sajid-Farhad being a successful duo of writers with more than a couple of 100-Cr films in their kitty, film starts off good with jokes flowing all over; mostly mouthed by TV comic star Krushna playing a partner-in-crime to Akshay. His one-liners that include names of Bollywood actors twisted & linked with the sentences he speaks succeed in tickling you at most but after a point; you don’t really care for him as the mindless plot has already given you much numbness to feel any sensation. Get a flavor of it here so that even you don’t like to buy the tickets, you can have a hint of it…‘I Rajni-can’t believe this’, ‘lag gaya na tujhe A-shock Kumar’, ‘kahaan ja reha hai sonakshi Seen-ha taan ke’ and so on. You may also see it as his extended ‘comedy circus’ act.

ENTERTAINMENT slips off from its track to entertain soon after the intermission when story gets zoomed in to Prakash Raj and Sonu Sood playing Karan-Arjun, overtly emotional villainous brothers with memories of mother holding them together on the lines of Rakhi Gulzar’s character in KARAN ARJUN. Akshay gets into fight mode and then comes the typical Bollywood climax in the hospital where patient is declared dead but punching him hard on the chest in state of rejection could bring him back in life. Medical science has certainly contributed a lot in our happy endings!

Film also doesn’t leave anyone barred from making fun of their caste, colour & creed. So Johny Lever playing the legal advisor named Habibullah constantly faces wrong pronunciations of his name including ‘Gorilla’ ‘Lulla’ and what not! You can hear an ‘azaan’ like sound in the background whenever he’s hurt. At last, it is nothing but a directionless shot to force the ill-shaped meaning of ‘Entertainment’ i.e. hitting the 100 Cr mark anyhow, by any means. As Krushna’s Character would speak, “Iss film se entertainment ki Aasha Parekh ki, toh aapke dimaag ki Anupam Kher nahin’! [1.5/5]    

HUMSHAKALS: Leave Entertainment, this is an insult to Cinema! [0.0/5]

Disclaimer: The fact that I had admired Sajid khan long back for being literally an encyclopedia to 70s-80’s Bollywood, especially with all the lesser known junior artists, character actors and the inside out gossips from every corner of the Bombay Film Industry, now hardly there to exist. Sajid Khan as a filmmaker has completely lost the respect even for being the tiniest part of this creative medium. So if in this review of mine, I sound unapologetically personal and too harsh sometimes, it’s purely intentional. Follows the review…

HUMSHAKALS is as illogical, as weird as its title. Neither there is a word like it in any of the dictionaries in the world, nor does this maddening world exist anywhere in this universe. Since it is supposedly a comedy of errors, I am going to try my best to make you laugh, or smile for that matter with some of its jokes. While working at a food-joint, one ‘Ashok & Kumar’ of the 3 look-alikes [Saif & Riteish; don’t bother who are the others] serves parathas made with cocaine and everyone around starts moving as either zombies or more like bhangra-lovers. Save yourself to witness them making ‘Vodka ke Parathe’. Don’t try this at your home!

The next ‘Ashok & Kumar’, escapees from mental asylum are seen playing with the life-supportive ventilator of an old man in coma [Akash Khurana as if he’s more comfortable there than being in the main league] as if it is some video game. Insensitive? Wait, there is more. The warden at the so called ‘CRAY G. Hospital’ [Played by Satish Shah] keeps torturing the patients with his favorite electric treatment performed with naked wires. Now, where on earth one uses that technique is barely matters if you are in a Sajid Khan World. This is the world where drops of a drug can turn you in dogs. People still apply Chloroform on hankies to make their targets passed out. A lollypop can heal the mental stroke.

Even all these can be overlooked if the very idea of entertainment is right, seriously, but it’s always like asking for too much from a Sajid Khan Film. Actually, it is an insult to your intellect and sensitivity as a human being. Homosexual men are again and again being portrayed as ‘always aroused’, moaning sex-starving guys. Characters cross-dress to seduce their look-alikes and fall into hysterically annoying love-cum-rape scenes. Songs come out of nowhere to just make it a loo-break in every 20-min or something. Considering the degree of stupidity Sajid throws at you, this is one nice & smartest move to keep viewers fresh like new from scratch. You should better take each one of them to survive the whole film.

Bipasha had earlier made it clear that she wasn’t happy with the outcome and that’s why she kept herself away from the film promotions. I wonder what made Saif not go for that option. Watching him suffer as an actor who can’t even crack a joke properly or deliver an ordinary piece of dialogue without hamming is a terrible experience! Riteish and Ram are not so bad comparatively. We better not discuss the girls. They are hardly there to impress with their acting skills.

At the end, I hope it is the end. Let’s just not take cinema for granted in the name of entertainment. Leave Entertainment alone, this is an insult to Cinema! I just can’t throw my precious stars on such waste of time, money and efforts of thousands of people on a film-set. Stay away, or else you might release your anger, aggression and distress caused by the film upon your friends and family! [0.0/5]