Adipurush

Adipurush Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Prabhas, Saif Ali Khan, Sunny Singh, Kriti Sanon, Devdatta Nage, Vatsal Sheth

Director: Om Raut

What’s Good: It’s based on ‘Ramayana’

What’s Bad: It’s based on ‘Ramayana’ but you can’t help!

Loo Break: It’s 179 minutes and you might have too many drinks to force yourself to pee & also because the movie is #NotMyRamayana

Watch or Not?: Even if you’re not aware of the story, watch Doordarshan’s 1978’s version or the Indo-Japanese take in 1992’s Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama (Way way better than whatever this was)

Language: Hindi

Available On: Theatrical release

Runtime: 179 Minutes

User Rating:

An extremely quick recap is given about the pre-Lord Ram’s (Prabhas) Vanvas phase as we land straight into what it looks like a Game Of Thrones’ Kingdom Of The North-inspired setup, where Lankesh ‘Ravana’ (Saif Ali Khan) is getting his boon granted by his great-grandfather Lord Brahma. Lankesh’s sister Shurpanakha loses her nose to Lord Rama after she tries to ask him to marry her despite being married to Sita (Kriti Sanon).

This starts the war between two forces leading Lankesh to abduct Sita in the disguise of a Sadhu (Saint) and provoking Raghav to come for him with rage which usually isn’t the emotion you’d connect with him. With the help of Sugreev, Lord Hanuman (Devdatta Nage), and his brother Lakshman (Sunny Singh), Lord Rama sets on the journey of bringing Janaki back from Ravana’s control leading to being named the Prince of Ayodhya, the leader of its people ever deserved.

Adipurush Movie Review: Script Analysis

By now everyone knows this story is based on the epic ‘Ramayana’ and director Om Raut has penned the screenplay which is a chaotic mess consistently throughout the film. Working on the story is so emotionally embedded in every Indian, the makers chose the risk of telling the right story in the wrong way. The story was supposed to be the film’s USP but because It’s so close to every one of us, it’ll hurt you after a point of time.

Since its trailer, Adipurush has lived through the five stages of accepting Grief. When the trailer launched, cinema fans & those who worship Lord Rama were in ‘denial’ that how can one be so bad at retelling a story that’s so sacred for many of us. Then it was the ‘anger’ that came in the form of trolling on social media where some tried to ‘bargain’ with the makers of the film to improve at least bits of the film. But, after watching the film, I can now confirm that the result is nothing but a ‘depressing’ truth and we all will have to ‘accept’ that this is #NotOurRamayana.

From the promotional assets, many of us collectively predicted that the VFX won’t be good and yes we all were right. Up till the first half, I was confused to answer: “Can you overlook the substandard quality of its VFX?” but the film ended with my hope of this being a project I’d recommend to anyone to understand the epic of Ramayana.

500 crores worth the reported budget and the makers hired someone who’s not comfortable in handling the camerawork of a film of such stature. Karthik Palani fails to manage the green-screen mess and does a shabby job of portraying the high-scale action sequences in a way they should’ve been. The 20 FPS (frames per second) video-game footage-kinda VFX will not only hurt your brain but also sadden you for the crores spent to create something like this.

Adipurush Movie Review: Star Performance

Prabhas takes limited effort to bring out the charm, calm and effervescence Lord Rama’s character is usually described as. He is playing one of the most important avatars of Lord Vishnu looking tired and out-of-the-place the whole time, how one could even accept that? It’s not a new character for which one could leave some benefit of the doubt, it’s something we all have seen growing up and if not, we all will narrate him to many upcoming generations.

Saif Ali Khan gets the victim of a poorly written character out of the mindset of pleasing a ‘large set of audience’ by entirely villainising ‘Ravana’ without depicting his other side in which many describe him as a “great scholar and the most intelligent person of his time.” To masala fry the narration, writers take the routine route of pitching this as a hero VS villain story instead of focusing on many nuanced details.

Sunny Singh looks lost from scene one and that doesn’t go away restricting him from being way too far from the life Sunil Lahiri had injected in Lakshmana. Kriti Sanon as Mata Sita has grace but due to her lacklustre chemistry with Prabhas & the wrongfully taken cinematic liberty about her costume decisions, even she fails to create the desired impact. Devdatta Nage as Lord Hanuman comes close to do a mockery of the character and fails to portray the perseverance, strength and even the humour Bajrang Bali has had in the literature.