Adipurush Movie Review — Sucharita Tyagi
Jitni kharaab movie hoti hai, mere phone mein utne zyaada notes hote hain.
This Adipurush review has pretty much written itself.
Hey y’all, my name is Sucharita. Today we are talking about Prabhas, Kriti Sanon, Saif Ali Khan starrer Adipurush.
Om Raut ki Ramayan adaptation Adipurush shuru hoti hai with a disclaimer longer than my notes. Most of it is white noise, the usual, we don’t want to hurt religious sentiments, but what stood out was the voice urging people to READ the Ramayan to interpret it for themselves, which means aage ke aane waale 3 ghante joh aap kharchen waale hain, that’s not enough work for you today.
Actually, I stand corrected. The movie started with the censor certificate jiske screen par aate hi, Jai Shree raam ke 3–4 naare lag gaye theatre mein. Itni aatur thi yeh film dekhne ke liye janta subah 7:30 bajey. Who alag hai khatam hone ke baad this was probably the quietest audience exiting the building. Shell-shocked, hurt, aghast.
Beech mein kya hua, lets take a look.
Ramayan is a tale as old as time, chhati class mein NCERT ke course mein thi yeh kitaab. I loved these stories as a kid, I’ve read various Hindi adaptations of the Sanskrit text, this was my Harry Potter before Harry Potter.
Epic texts like this should ALWAYS be open to analysis and interpretation, Hum saath saath hain ho ya Rajneeti. But if you’re going to turn one of them into a Marvel-style superhero universe, WHILE still keeping the main characters looking and sounding like they’re straight out of Valmiki’s draft folder, but SOME of them have tattoos and shiny bright superpowers, another sounds like he grew up in Matunga as yet another plays heavy metal veena singing Shivoham Shivoham, you BETTER have a Christopher Nolan grip on your material.
Om Raut’s vision for the story and his grip on it is both hilariously loose if not straight-up offensive to both the film critic and the Jai Shree Ram chanting audience. Movie ke shuruat mein, aalsi se voice over mein, 2 D animation ke saath aapne badey emphasis ke saath kahaa ki Indian HISTORY ke pages mein golden page Ram ki kahaani ka hai, mind you AFTER the disclaimer this is being claimed, what you’re about to see is HISTORY, Merriam Webster ke hissab se “a chronological record of significant events”. At this point im resigned to even seeing HOW Om Raut will convince us to believe joh dekhene waali hain woh actual ITIHAAS hai, and if you’re telling me Sita, around her haran, was living in a cliffside cave and not a scenic cottage in panchavati I’ll buy INTO it, lekin my friend same sequence mein Raavan ka Pushpak vimaan which according to canon was this super technologically advanced piece of machinery, IS A GIGANTIC DEMON LOOKING DISEASE CARRYING EYE BULGING MOUTH DROLLING FRIKKING POSSESSED 20 FEET WINGSPAN KA CHAMGADAD who Lankesh may or may not be physically attracted to, I don’t HAVE the option of taking ANYTHING this film says seriously.
Itni insincere hai Adipurush, when Hanuman returns from setting fire to Lanka, the first thing he says to Ram is, “bata aaya unhe, hamaari beheno ko haath lagaayenge toh unki Lanka lagaa denge”, which in the 5 minutes hanuman has set fire to lanka has seemingly already become a figure of speech! Speaking of lanka, forget the beach-y paradise we are told that country is, the setting looks like a city trying to rebuild under Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. Lanka is supposed to be sone ki kyunki Raavan stole it from Kuber but in this film it looks like it’s made of Granite mano Kuber bhagwaan nahi Kuber Tiles waale se churaayi thi.
Again to my previous point, interpretations karein, nahi toh wahee puraani gaatha baar baar kehte rahenge. Ashok Vatika ki jagah Cherry blossom Vatika mein captured Sita ko visit karne aaye Hanuman se Dhakdasur pooche “yeh teri bua ka bageecha hai”, toh dekhne waale se ummeed yeh nah rakhein ki dialogue ko overlook karke hum shaandaar VFX ki duniya mein kho jaayenge kyunki, most of your VFX is Prabhas running on ground that’s slipping away under his feet as his face remains frozen in time and space.
The acting, whatever one can make out under the CGI hair and ghoonghat is……cruel really. I am obsessed with Lakshman’s Punjabi twang btw. “Kya hua aapne pehley kabhi yudh ni dekhe” sent me. Poor Sunny Singh wants to talk of victory and valor but manages “murryadda” and “yeh toh phisaddi hai”, it’s sweet in a heartbreaking way. Saif Ali Khan as Lankesh strides like a man who has just realized he is very big and has to now change his walk to match his literal physical stature. While the poor chap is the only one on this cast trying to do something interesting with what he’s been given to work with, when in his granite Lanka he appears to be enjoying a vigorous massage carried out by 20 literal pythons, I didn’t know where to look. At the expression of orgasmic joy on his face, or at his sanctum sanctorum with 10 stone statues of him all around, every single one of which btw is capable of singing as illustrated in the aforementioned Shivoham Shivoham song.
Visually, Adipurush is derivative and entirely unimaginative. Before Sita gets kidnapped ek scene mein Lakshman is just showing her the power of his Lakshman Rekha, which straight up is Protego Maxima, and if there EVER was a doubt Harry Potter se uthaya hai sab, they’re almost immediately attacked by dementors, lead by a Skeletor looking weirdo, clearly high on meth. All the army camps are a direct lift from the Lord of the Rings movies, Lanka ke interiors are sasti copy of Mordor, Ayodhya looks like Asgard, throne par Dashrath hai ya Odin who knows? Kumbhakarn is Khal Drogo with a janeu, Vatsal Seth is an emo Flash, and I could go on and on, but then this review will become 3 hours because not a single FRAME of this film is original or novel in any way.
To my previous point about Adipurush being insincere, in so many places one can tell certain Urdu words, which are a daily part of the Hindi lexicon, were written into the dialogue, and have been dubbed over later by many characters, all of whom frankly sound like Sharad Kelkar. Lips says raasta, ears hear maarg. Never mind in the next dialogue they forget to correct this and Ram ends up saying rasta again. Prabhas ke hoth kahein zaroorat, Sharad Kelkar ki awaaz avyashyakta. It’s giving “gone on floors before proofreading”.
If that level of honesty is good enough for you, film lagi hai theatres mein dekh aayein.
