Tag Archives: Kiara Advani

Vinaya Vidheya Rama (2019)

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vinaya vidheya rama

Boyapati Srinu specialises in films that are all action and little plot, but even by his standards Vinaya Vidheya Rama is a nonsensical mess. The film has zero logic and even less of a story than usual, along with a completely muddled-up timeline and ludicrously impossible situations. I don’t expect much logic from mass masala movies but I can appreciate their usually well-choreographed fight scenes, good music and memorable choreography, but even all of these fall significantly short in this overlong, systematic bloodbath of a film. A quick perusal of the plot (such as it is) makes it seem that Vinaya Vidheya Rama might fall into the ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ category, but it misses this too by a mile, and not even the best efforts of Ram Charan can save the film from being anything other than a drearily predictable watch.

The opening scenes are also the best and since they almost make sense the film initially lulls you into a false sense of anticipation. Four orphans living on the railway in Vizag find a baby and on discovering he has been bitten by ants and also apparently has a head injury, they take the infant to a local hospital. Amazingly they’re allowed in, don’t have to wait and receive excellent care and attention from the attending medical staff with the eventual outcome that the doctor (Chalapathi Rao) adopts all five children. The four kids decide to send Rama to school while they raise the money to keep him there, but an early run-in with some child-napping thugs leads to the infant Rama disposing of the gang and vowing to send his brothers to school instead. This sounds ludicrous, but honestly, it’s far from being the most ridiculous idea in the film.

The brothers grow up and get married but creepily all continue to live together with their wives and assorted children. Only one of the brothers is ever called by name, and he’s also the only one who has any gainful employment, which might explain their unusual living arrangements. Bhuvan Kumar (Prasanth) is an election officer which brings him into contact with a warlord living in Bihar who objects to the government elections in his area. This necessitates the usual argy-bargy between the government officials, supporting police, local townsfolk and the generic thugs employed by Raja Bhai Munna (Vivek Oberoi) with the inevitable outcome that Rama (Ram Charan) has to head up north and save the day.

There is also a vague romance with Kiara Advani as an arranged marriage candidate. Boyapati Srinu tries to be topical by making her mother (Hema) a violent advocate for feminism but this falls completely flat and is at times actually quite nauseating while her husband (Prudhvi Raj) is portrayed as a hen-pecked loser who somehow stumbled into marriage. It’s not funny, it’s not even necessary for the story and the whole entirely pointless romance should have been left on the cutting room floor.

However, the romance is the basis for including the songs – mostly set as fantasy-dream sequence numbers. Although Charan dances up a storm, the female backing dancers are often out of time and incredibly stiff, which significantly detracts from his performance and makes these songs just as difficult to watch as the preposterous story. Devi Sri Prasad doesn’t break any new ground with the music either and the songs are mostly generic dance numbers that don’t leave much of an impression.

It doesn’t get any better. The story timeline keeps switching between pre- and post- Bhuvan going to Bihar and it’s frequently unclear just exactly when any particular scene is taking place. After a while I just ceased to care. Things get even more bizarre when Rama somehow manages to get from an airport in Gujarat to Bihar on top of a speeding train and then on horseback in less time than it takes for Raja Bhai Munna to threaten Rama’s brothers and their wives. That’s all the way across India in minutes standing on the top of a train and using a smartphone app for directions to the location of his brother’s phone. There’s always some suspension of disbelief required for any action movie but it’s a whole new dimension of disbelief that’s required for a Boyapati Srinu film!

Having arrived at his destination, Rama then proceeds to slaughter thugs like they were mosquitoes and claims to kill 300 men before finally being captured and imprisoned in a belt and chain affair that never looks as if it would be effective. There’s no doubt that Rama will win the day, but of course there has to be a lot more speeches and posturing before that happens – interestingly the best posturing comes from Bhuvan Kumar’s wife, Gayatri Devi (Sneha) whose determined defiance is more effective than all of Rama’s intense and overly dramatic speeches.

The fight scenes are brutal, bloody and in true Boyapati Srinu fashion, no object is unable to be used for impaling, dismemberment or general destruction. I have to admit that there are moments when the fight scenes threaten to be entertaining, but then they degenerate back into formulaic action that is dull because it’s been seen many, many times before.

I wanted to like Vinaya Vidheya Rama because a film this silly should be entertaining, but for every fleeting moment that worked, there were hundreds of others that just didn’t. Apart from Rama, none of the characters are anything other than a brief sketch and to add to the tedium, all of Rama’s brothers (Aryan Rajesh, Ravi Varma and Madhunandan) spend the entire film talking about how amazingly wonderful he is. Vivek Oberoi’s villain says and does the usual things along with his army of ineffectual thugs, and while in general Vivek is fine as a bad guy, the character is so loosely drawn that there is never anything juicy enough for him to really get his teeth into.

Despite all the explosions, fights and general mayhem, Vinaya Vidheya Rama is surprisingly unexciting, made even more tedious by the unrelenting vagueness of the story. It’s a shame because there are the odd moments of light – the four young kids are good at the beginning, and the wardrobe department has done a good job styling Charan for the songs. But at the end of the day it’s not enough and even for fans this one is a tough watch.

Bharat Ane Nenu

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Koratala Siva and Mahesh Babu team up for this smart political thriller. It’s a good looking film with a fairly solid story, but you’ll need to turn your logic-meter off, or even inside out, at times. And not just for the gravity defying action scenes.

Bharat (Mahesh) is a perennial student in a London populated by white people with bizarre accents. He is on his 5th university degree, and has no immediate plans to stop studying. He is smart and curious, but might lack a bit of focus or motivation. Called home after the sudden death of his politician father (R Sarathkumar), Bharat is inveigled into taking up the apparently hereditary role of CM by his dad’s friend and colleague Varadarajulu (Prakash Raj). But while Bharat may be clueless about local Andhra Pradesh issues, he’s very rules driven and task focussed and likes to act decisively. He will bring back the FEAR, RESPONSIBILITY and ACCOUNTABILITY (caps courtesy of the subtitles team) that he thinks society needs. And that sets him on a collision course with pretty much everyone in politics.

There are some odd inconsistencies in Bharat’s logic at times and it felt like there was an often unacknowledged conflict or contradiction in the film between what he stood for and what he did. Bharat left home to go live with friends in the UK when he was just a kid. He stayed away for years, but he still remembers his mother telling him stories about duty and doing the right thing (underscored by her death when he broke a promise so….). He seemed happy to follow his own whims while abroad and had no firm plans. However Hyderabad traffic sets him ablaze with indignation. He’s a true believer, fighting to see his vision brought to life, and at odds with the career politicians who feather their own nests. A benevolent dictator is still a dictator so I found it interesting that apparently I was supposed to see this as democratic representation of the will of the people. He was never elected, just chosen first by calculating party men and then by public acclaim. And the film shows that acclaim can turn very quickly to scorn. I really did like that in what could have been a clichéd scene of people coming to the Hero to rid their village of a problem, he turned the tables and asked why they didn’t save themselves. It’s a tired trope that needs to be retired or examined, and having Bharat say he would support people but they had to get off their butts and do something to help themselves was excellent. He sees a girl at a bus stop every morning and has no qualms about using state resources to get her number, but he does ask for her consent at key junctures so there is that. He asks why the roads have to be closed for his ministerial convoy but again, no issue with taking over an entire restaurant so he can have a coffee date with Vasumathi. There’s a bit of “don’t do as I do, do as I say” in Bharat.

Mahesh is convincing as the driven reformer who wants to remind people of the rule of law, and he can carry off the grand speeches. Bharat starts out using his intelligence and will, but at a point his awesome fighting skillz surface. It’s fitting that at the moment he went from protagonist to Hero, he was surrounded by swirling movie tickets just like the paper thrown by a cinema audience to greet a hero’s entrance. The action scenes are highly stylised, relying on Mahesh’s ability to stare down the camera while sauntering past wearing a baddie as a backpack. I laughed loudly and alone at that visual! Koratala Siva knows exactly what he is doing with the mass tropes and with his actor. I don’t think there is anything in the role that challenged Mahesh’s abilities but he gives a committed and smartly layered performance. For those who rely on me for other insights about layering, yes he wears t-shirts and even flashes his knees. I suspect in one scene that he might have had two white t-shirts stitched together to avoid any hint of transparency. But it’s modern, minimal layer Mahesh in terms of wardrobe.

Kiara Advani is Vassu, the object of the CM’s affections. While Vasumathi is interchangeable with just about every other newbie Telugu film heroine, she is vaguely intelligent and has a life. She obviously likes Bharat, but is nervous because of his position and just because she’s a middle class girl. Her giving him a stick on moustache was a stroke of genius. Seeing Bharat happily at one with the crowds on their low key dates because of his dodgy mo was very funny. Unfortunately after a promising start, Vassu loses all agency as soon as men start on about their own honour. I’m neither here nor there as far as Kiara Advani is concerned. She is fine but there’s so little to the character that I couldn’t say she brought anything unique to the role either. Her outfits were boho student in daily life but the songs are where the costume department run amok.

The Devi Sri Prasad soundtrack is full of tracks that sound like other tracks, and the lyrics are loaded with dubious English rhyming nonsense. Perhaps I am being harsh and Vasumathi likes to be called “my lovely harmonica”! Mahesh’s prime dancing days are a thing of the past, I think, so the choreography was largely of the walking and pointing variety. The big set number Vachadayyo Saami is a standout mostly for the colour and spectacle (which includes the aforementioned knees).

The supporting ensemble is full of competent actors, well cast, and most with a bit of depth or development to their characters. Prakash Raj is excellent as the avuncular Varadarajulu, completely believable as the long time friend and frenemy. Anish Kuruvilla, house favourite occasional director/That Guy, plays a slightly slimy but not unlikeable Chief Secretary caught between the party and the CM. He gets to give his appalled expression a good workout, along with a bit of side eye. Brahmaji is the CMs assistant and like most people dragged along in Bharat’s wake he alternates between flustered and tickled pink at the goings on. Another favourite That Guy, Ajay, has a small but sensible role too. And I was very pleased to see good old Mukhtar (Mukhtar Khan) was not forgotten after one pivotal and quite brutal scene. Bharat might be swept away by the public but the continuity and attention to detail and people was there, as befits his character and this film.

If you like the idea of a well-acted, well directed, and more violent story somewhat along the lines of Mr Smith Goes to Washington but with dodgy subtitles do see Bharat Ane Nenu!