Tag Archives: Bunny

Badrinath

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The great thing about an Adventure without Subtitles when Allu Arjun stars is knowing that no matter what, the dancing will be awesome.  But there is so much more to enjoy in Badrinath, and we had a great time.

The plot, for what it’s worth, can be summed up as follows. Prakash Raj is a guru who trains young boys to defend temples in the major holy cities of India. His school is located high in the mountains, and the scenery and the sets are nothing short of spectacular. Allu Arjun is Badri, who is assigned to protect Badrinath. Badri has a special relationship with the place, amazing sword and fighting skills, a strong faith in god and his guru, and is earmarked to take over the training camp. Tamanna is Alaknanda, a very pretty atheist who lost her faith after seeing her parents accidentally catch fire and die at a pooja. Badri and Alaknanda eventually fall in love, then the bad guys turn up to kidnap her. Will Badri desert his post, anger his guru and rescue his love? So much drama!

This is a vehicle for Bunny and, as expected, he excels in the dancing and fighting scenes. We had questioned the efficacy of an Indian Samurai when pitted against men with guns, but that question was put to rest. You need arms attached to your body to pull a trigger. Swords win! The fight scenes were cool, and it looked like someone may have been inspired by games where each set of bad guys has a particular set of weapons. So once the guys with sickles are defeated, the next batch has axes and so on. It isn’t all gore and anger though; there is room for what our friend calls Funny Bunny and he is joyful in the dances. He does an excellent wet shirt, and even wears a Chiranjeevi inspired silver cape in one song! This pleased us greatly.

Tamanna is a beautiful girl, and she can act and dance. She more or less keeps up with Bunny, and her facial expressions when she dances are great. Alaknanda is rarely more than a sketch, a pretty face on the sidelines, and sadly it seems that she discovers faith and love only after Badri slaps her. She also discovers more appropriate clothing. (And she had been spectacularly rude and stupid in the lead up to the slap). There is a fun moment when she keeps pretending to slip so she can fling herself on Badri’s manly chest and cop a feel. That seemed perfectly sensible so we decided we liked her a lot. Her subplot involving abduction by evil relatives and an attempt at forcing her to marry could have been cut back without diminishing the idea of the damsel in distress. Tamanna was very good in 100% Love, and lovely in Badrinath, so we hope more substantial roles come her way.

Alaknanda had the best imagination. Most of the songs were her dreams and she spared no effort in dressing Bunny up and giving every single backing dancer the most amazing outfits as well.

On the subject of wardrobe, this is what Badri wore as his going into town outfit so there are arguments for and against him choosing his own clothes.

Prakash Raj is excellent as the guru. He gets to do pretend martial artsy stuff, levitate, growl at people and also use his misty eyes of love. His character is the cause of Badri’s conflict as he demands the young man be sworn in as his replacement, and thus swear off marriage and women. He probably should have thought that through a bit more.  But we could rely on him to do the right thing when it counted and all was well between the master and disciple.

The Comedy Sideplot was over represented by MS Narayana, Venu Madhav , Master Bharath and Brahmi among others. Too many! And took up at least 30 minutes that could have been condensed or cut. Brahmi was fun, and the crowd went wild for him, but it was basically the same fleecing the pilgrims shtick he did in Indra. We guess that was a deliberate reference. The supporting cast was full of familiar faces, all of whom do the thing they do so well. We think the Allu family pug made an appearance too so if Ice’s agent is reading this, please confirm? But in an unsubtitled film we tend not to give the support artists their full dues as we have to concentrate on the main action. And yes, there were compelling visuals adding to the distractions. We totally appreciated the backing dancers for their enthusiasm, their dancing and the way they rocked the purple and gold glittery outfits.

We did have to notice the evil family as they showed dedication to the bulk purchase of coloured contact lenses, and the matriarch wore some excellent saris.

The evil henchmen deserve a shout out. From the Pick n Mix Assorted Terrorist Stereotype Brigade to the Ninjas in Hoodies, they gave it their best, and Peter Hein and team really made them work for their money. He knows how to make chaos look elegant.

There are massive plot holes, but they aren’t an impediment to enjoying the story. There is no pretence at realism so questions of why there are never any police around or how Badri could survive the latest incident just didn’t matter. We were far more interested in why people wore some of the crazy outfits. The soundtrack is effective and enjoyable, and the songs are well placed. How well they stand up without the supporting visuals is another question.

This is an out and out entertainer that succeeds, and the audience last night certainly enjoyed it. The balance of action and ridiculous stunts with beautiful visuals and fantastic dancing is just about right. See it on a big screen if you can!

Arya 2

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This is the second film in the ”South Indian Cinema Induction Programme” for our friends. MAGADHEERA (Step One) is a full out epic film that dazzles the senses, while Arya 2 on the other hand is on a more intimate, character driven scale. It also has many of the staples of a Telugu film used to great effect:

–          Creepy weird stalking = true love and you should be totally grateful to your stalker and love them back
–          The hero will fall in love with the heroine instantly on first seeing her.
–          Machetes are essential for any proper fight scene
–          No Telugu film is complete without Brahmi (it may indeed be a law that he must appear)
–          Totally awesome dancing.

The movie contains similar themes of one-sided love and stalking til you win as the earlier (and far inferior) film, Arya, but is not a sequel as such so you don’t need to see that to understand Arya 2.  The child Arya sacrifices his chance at leaving the orphanage when he wins a coin toss but lets his best friend Ajay be adopted. Years later Ajay reluctantly gives Arya a job after Arya rescues him from some thugs. Ajay tells him he must be the perfect employee and if anything untoward happens, Arya is out. He doesn’t think that Arya can manage this as his childhood friend is a drunken thug who has never managed to make anything of himself. However, Arya transforms himself into the stylish Mister Perfect and confounds Ajay’s expectation of a short-lived stint at honest employment.

Both fall in love with Geetha, played by Kajal Agarwal, and to show his true love Arya stalks her – of course!!  This totally freaks her out, especially since no-one will believe that the perfect Arya could do any of the things she is accusing him of.  It says enough that Brahmi plays the HR Director, so you can imagine the quality of staff counselling on offer! Finally she turns to Ajay to try and shake off Arya’s attentions, and announces that she will marry him.

Meanwhile her family, who are the local big-wigs in her village, want to marry her off to the son of their rivals in order to bring the two families together and stop all the bloodshed.  For various reasons, Arya goes to let her family know that she will only marry his good friend Ajay.  Along the way he manages to get married to her himself and his conflicts between doing the right thing for his best friend, his own desires and flaws and his total all encompassing love for the girl are brilliantly portrayed. How he tries to resolve all these dramas and achieve a happy resolution for all forms the second half of the film.

This is Allu Arjun’s movie all the way, and he does turn in one of his best performances to date as the psychopathic Arya.  Bunny manages to make all of this convincing as he swings from manic stalker and psychopath to tender lover and concerned friend and back again, all the while trying to make Geetha’s world as perfect as possible, be the ideal worker, solve the inter-family rivalry, and be true to his best friend.

Special mention of his goldfish – despite being worried for its safety the whole way through the movie, thankfully all was well in the end.  We choose not to consider the fluctuations in appearance of the goldfish, and decided it was just occasional use of a stunt fish rather than multiple goldfishes. Indeed the goldfish had a vital role to play, apart from the obvious one  demonstrating that Arya really was a good person at heart because he took care of a goldfish!

The added touch of Arya administering first aid to the thugs while he was beating them was genius!  He wasn’t wantonly violent – just teaching them a lesson. This was picked up again in another fabulous fight scene involving a bus and a trail of ambulances.

Other plus points of this film are Kajal Agarwal, who is just beautiful and feisty enough to make a very attractive heroine.  Her evolution from hating Arya and trying to ruin him to understanding his motivation and problems was believable. The scenes where she realised Ajay might not be the man she believed him to be were effective and not overplayed. The addition of Subbu (played by Ajay) as her third prospective bridegroom, the son of the opposing gang-leader, was an unexpected bonus as this actor is another favourite.  The Sholay tinged bromance between the characters played by Ajay and Bunny was both hilarious and touching, and more than a little twisted.

In fact the only downside, and it is small, is the character of Ajay, played by Navdeep in the movie.   Despite the  back-story showing how young Arya manipulated situations to ensure they stayed close, little of this was referenced again in later scenes, except by Arya who genuinely seemed to care about their shared past, albeit in his warped way. Ajay seemed just mean and spineless as he tried to throw Arya to the wolves and come away with the girl and without the burden of his “best friend”.  We really never care about Navdeep’s Ajay at all, despite the potential for us to see him as a victim of an unstable relationship or as the villain of the piece. Navdeep also didn’t turn in a particular inspiring performance, and it really felt as if he was sleep-walking through the role.

The soundtrack and choreography are excellent, and months later we are still listening to the songs on high rotation. Neither of us quite understand who came up with the reverse-worm move in “My Love Is Gone”, or why, but they all seem very proud of it, and it clearly took some doing! The muted colour palette in the city scenes gives the boy-meets-girl story a fresh and modern look, and the monochrome costumes for Arya are quite a remove from the usual bling-is-more Telugu hero style.

The cinematography and editing are brilliant, and the dance and fight sequences look fantastic. For those who like a colourful village wedding, machetes, moustaches and skanky item girl, these essential elements are abundant once the story relocates to Rayalaseema.

Heather says: Arya 2 is my favourite Telugu movie.  It just has absolutely everything.  Action, drama, comedy, Allu Arjun (who just happens to be my favourite Telugu actor), brilliant dancing and a really well plotted and paced story.  The lead actors shine in this film, and Sukumar’s direction is just fabulous throughout.  I agree with Temple that the small details and personality quirks shown throughout really raise this film above other ‘stalking as love’ films I’ve seen.  The only quibble I have is with Ajay who was just too one-dimensional, but since he was only there to showcase how selfish and narrow minded he was compared to the big hearted Arya, this wasn’t too much of an issue.  I love the music in this film, the dancing is just incredible, although trying to copy the dance moves in “My Love has Gone” has caused some minor injuries in our dance group.  I would therefore advise watching with some caution and the ‘please don’t try this at home’ warning should apply! This film makes me laugh, cry, sigh over Arya, shout at the screen, and even gasp every time at the climax even though I’ve watched it many, many times.  Just perfect – 5 stars!

Temple says: When I started watching Hindi films, I saw a lot of early SRK films where he played the stuttering stalking psycho that you couldn’t help but love, but who dies in a hail of bullets. Arya 2 reminded me a little of those films, but with the added bonus that the very attractive anti-hero survives, and gets the girl. Hurrah!! But I will add, I only barrack for the stalkers and psychos in films, not in real life.  Small details in the direction really made this film perfect for me – Arya putting his glasses back on so he could see his dream sequence clearly, the goldfish, the tiny jail for frogs, Bunny’s excellent moments of pure mayhem when Arya broke through the surface of Mister Perfect and the recurring musical and sound effect motifs. Oh – and a heroine entrance featuring an umbrella hat. Haven’t seen one of those in ages! I really have no criticism of Arya 2. I love the story development, it has all the action and brilliant dancing I want, and the comedy was actually funny. Allu Arjun just shone in this role, and is a delight from start to finish. I’m sure it was considered quite risky to make this film as it isn’t a standard heroic role, and the character is manipulative and unhinged right to the end, and not something a lot of young actors would venture. A huge thank you to the producers, director and writer and all the cast for making something so quirky and fun. Of course this gets 5 stars from me!

Vedam

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After weeks of reading about the latest Allu Arjun film, we booked tickets to see it at a local cinema.  Booking tickets was an experience in itself.  The lovely Rama was baffled at our interest, and after speaking to us both on the phone offered his services post film to explain anything we didn’t understand as the print (he repeatedly warned us) had no subtitles.

So off we went to watch the opening night – our first Telugu movie on the big screen! Yay!

The cinema was fairly full, not totally packed,  but we were still happy to have got there early enough to be able to find good seats. We did notice quite a few sideways glances as we took our seats, since we were obviously the only non-Telugu speakers in the entire cinema. Then the lights went down, the movie started rolling and the audience started to cheer – awesome! Haven’t heard an audience reaction like this in Australia since Chak De India! Much more like going to see a movie in India, since the Bollywood viewing audiences have been very tame recently.  The cheers and whistles resurfaced every time one of the main characters was introduced, or when they did something fairly spectacular – which for Bunny, Manoj and Anushka was fairly often!

The movie follows five storylines

– Nagayya as the old man Ramulu, a weaver, whose grandson is taken away to work in a brick factory after he cannot pay the moneylender.


– Manoj Manchu plays an up and coming rock star, going against the wishes of his mother who wants him to join the army like his deceased father – a war hero

– Anushka plays Saroja, a prostitute who wants to set up her own business

-Allu Arjun is Cable Raju, a guy from the slums who is trying get enough money to buy tickets to a party to further his chances of marrying his rich girlfriend – his ticket out of poverty. Raju is a social chameleon, switching from slum to country club regular Raj at the flick of a hairband and the donning of a designer fake t-shirt. (Temple – OK maybe it was just me obsessing about the manband but it really was almost a character by itself.)

 

Raju

 

 

Raj

– Manoj Bajpai plays a Muslim, Raheemuddin Qureishi, trying to leave India after his wife has miscarried following an incident at a Hindu celebration in the streets.

By the interval the main characters were all on their way to Hyderabad for the final interweaving of their stories.  As the lights went up we had to answer a number of questions from people sitting near us: Why were we there? Did we understand Telugu?  Did we understand what was happening? Did we know who the actors were? And finding out that we did know the names and previous movies of a number of the actors seemed to totally amaze everyone!

In fact we were coping with the lack of subtitles pretty well – Krish managed to get his message across so that even without the dialogue it was pretty clear what was happening.  The only thing I guess we were missing was the comedy, but we knew to laugh as soon as Brahmi’s bald spot appeared!

So overall this was just such an excellent experience, the crowd were really behind the movie; yelling and whistling pretty much the whole way through.  The stories were all easy to follow at least in a broad sense without subtitles, and the actors all did a great job.  Manoj was arrogant enough to be a rock star, Anushka was believable as a prostitute particularly in looking beautiful, affordable and not overly glamorised, the plight of Nagaya’s family tugged at the heart strings, and of course Manoj Bajpai and Allu Arjun drew our attention every time they were on screen.

Bunny was fantastic as the guy trying to get the money (and being spectacularly inept in his efforts at turning to crime) and in the second half he was just so believable as he battled with his conflicting emotions. (Heather -OK – so I’m a big Bunny fan – of course I’m going to pay more attention to his scenes!!) The scene where Raju struggled with Ramulu, holding back his strength, trying to win without physically hurting the old man, was so intense.  Bunny managed to show the conflict his character felt and we all felt his despair at what he had done. Contrast this with the joyful peek-a-boo scene after his redemption, and the range of emotions and engagement was just exhilarating.

We enjoyed it so much that a week later when there were some extra showings ‘by public demand’ we went back to do it all over again.

The second time round, because we knew the story, we didn’t have to concentrate so much on what was happening.  We could focus more on the performances of the actors  and totally enjoy the songs and the dancing.  Saroja’s song in the brothel was a perfect filmi moment – it felt random, spontaneous, a bit ragged round the edges, and full of life.

There was still no hint of an explanation as to why Bunny was wearing a t-shirt as a shrug in his poolside cavorting, but some things don’t really need a reason. They just are.

(Shrug alert at 30 sec)

Vedam was just brilliant – an excellent choice for our first Telugu film on the big screen.  Having such a great time ensures that we will be back to watch more and more new Tollywood releases,  with or without subtitles!

Heather says: Fantastic direction by Krish – this was a really wonderful watch.  All five storylines were well developed and it was a real delight to be able to watch each character’s evolution in their journey through the film.  Allu Arjun just gets better and better as an actor – he really was the stand out for me in this film – the portrayal of his confusion as his desires fought against his basic good morals was riveting – an impressive performance!   Also have to mention first-rate portrayals by Nikki as Saroja’s friend Kapuram, and Ravi Prakash as the corrupt cop.  Manoj Bajpai’s story was perhaps the hardest to fully follow and appreciate all the nuances without subtitles, but the power behind his emotions was very clear, particularly in the last scenes in the hospital.  In summary, Vedam is an excellent interweaving of five storylines with an impressive conclusion, fabulous performances by all the actors and brilliant work by the cinematographer.  And I think I’ve managed to use every superlative there is in that sentence!  I cannot wait for the DVD release to fill in a few of the missing details and to finally understand the dialogues I see quoted everywhere online!  A full 5 stars from me!

Temple says: Without rehashing the whole plot, it is enough to say that Krish took 5 pretty typical narrative arcs and wove them together in a way that made these stories seem fresh and novel. The ending is certainly darker than most mass crowd pleasers would normally allow. In hindsight there are some beautiful little pieces of foreshadowing scattered through the early scenes – and I think its the mark of a really good filmmaker that you walk out almost replaying the whole film and saying “A-ha! That’s what that was all about”. We haven’t mentioned the supporting cast but they were uniformly good, and looked like real people. The extras casting is a strength of this film I think, as well as the bigger budget names. I am an Allu Arjun fan, I happily confess, but I was pleasantly surprised by his ability to take what could be the weakest of the plot threads and make it seem real and engaging. His comic timing and spontaneity worked to great effect in the role of Raju. I am  really looking forward to seeing this on DVD so I can pick up more of  the subtleties of dialogue. Maybe it will seem like a different film? Who knows! For now, I give this 4 and a half stars ( I am deducting points for the manband. I am taking a stand.Heather points out that anyone who can wear a manband and NOT look like Abhishek should be applauded. I remain unconvinced.)