Valimai VS Pushpa VS KGF! A Brutal Lesson Taught ( Photo Credit – Movie Still )
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With the release of Ajith’s Valimai last week, respect for Allu Arjun’s Pushpa, Yash’s KGF has gone up a notch for various reasons and the major of them being – why making a smartly executed potboiler is not everyone’s cup of tea. With the release of Pushpa & the aftermath of frenzy it faced, there have been movies trying to take the ‘pan-India’ route to try the luck but (quoting Gossip Girl here) “Not everyone wants to be Blair Waldorf. Not everyone can be.”
Every film can’t be Pushpa or even KGF for that matter. You can’t expect to put similar ingredients & get a similar tasting dish, there’s a process to cook that can’t be copied by everyone. Pushpa, KGF had a stylish hero, so does Valimai, all these films follow the protagonist-worship path but the first two do it in such a convincing manner.
Valimai also tries to do what Prabhas’ Saaho failed to, facing similar issues & exposing the same loopholes. There’s a reason why such films are called ‘masala’ because they’re a ‘mixture’ of all things good and don’t rely entirely on the protagonist. Yes, a hero plays ‘an important role, not an ‘only’ important role.
Pushpa, KGF had so many things, apart from Allu Arjun & Yash, going in their favour. But, Valimai heavily depends on Ajith just as Race 3, Tubelight and mostly every other Salman Khan film rely on him (not Bajrangi Bhaijaan). Pushpa & KGF maintained an equal balance of drama, action with a bit of romance sprinkled on it.
Valimai, on the other hand, doesn’t optimise its best part i.e. the adrenaline pumping sequences & waste its brutally stretched runtime in the half-baked drama. A drop on its second day at the box office is a sign of caution for all the filmmakers trying to ‘mimic’ what Pushpa did. With this, we hope Pushpa 2 and KGF 2 continue their ‘Baahubali’ legacy without of course ‘Bollywoodzing’ things, and also understand why every masala film can’t be a commercial potboiler.
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