Tag Archives: Tollywood

Arundhati

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Arundhati is a wonderful revenge story with plenty of melodrama, over the top action and what appears to have been an unlimited budget for blood.  Add in a heroine driven storyline with some excellent performances and it makes for a worthy  addition to the South Indian Cinema Induction Programme.

We learn through flash-back that Arundhati was a princess of Gadwal, trained in the arts of dance and war.  Her bravery even as a child was likened to the goddess Jejamma, so this was how she was known.

Her sweet and innocent older sister, Bhargavi was married off to Pasupathi, the evil and depraved nephew of the King, who enjoyed a protected status despite his raping and murdering ways.  After he attacked and killed Jejamma’s blind dancing teacher, Bhargavi killed herself.

In revenge the precocious young Arundhati beat Pasupathi, tied him to a horse and drove him from the kingdom.  Despite extensive injuries he didn’t die, but was rescued by a group of Agoras and learned to be even more evil, which we didn’t think was possible.

Having his vile talents augmented by the knowledge of tantric arts and by the possession of malevolent spirits, he returned to take revenge on Arundhati, fortuitously arriving on the day of her wedding.

Some excellent posturing and slashing later, including a take on the drum scene from House of Flying Daggers, Arundhati defeated him and imprisoned him in the palace, still alive but trapped in a fairly well constructed tomb.

Two generations later and there is a new Arundhati, who comes back to town for her marriage.  Pasupathi is now an evil spirit, confined in his grave in the ruined fort by various amulets and prayers which prevent his escape.  He uses the influx of naive newcomers to try and break free of his prison. He tricks a young couple into entering the fortress where one disappears and the other becomes insane.  Attempts by the mad man to break open the grave are thwarted, and he ends up being chained up in the village.  Pasupathi is able to lock doors and move objects to try and kill Arundhati’s father, but luckily can’t use the same tactics to escape.

Just as an aside to all heroines and disposable sidekicks – if you go into a building and have to break cobwebs which are thick enough to block your way, there is a very good chance that the friend you are looking for is not actually there, since otherwise there would already be a path of broken cobwebs – just a suggestion!

Eventually and inevitably Pasupathi manages to break free and torments Arundhati. She now has to come up with a way to vanquish this evil spirit for good, otherwise he will claim her as his wife and all of her family will die.   She has some help in the form of a Muslim fakir who seems to be pretty well unstoppable, which is just as well as there are many attempts on his life!  Sadly he is pretty inept at passing on the simple instructions he was given to stop Pasupathi or the second half might have ended much sooner. Everyone else who tries to help her dies – usually in very gruesome and bloody ways!  Did we mention this film had an exceptional gore and blood budget? The heavy-breathing Pasupathi manages get Arundhati exactly where he wants her – but will he succeed in his evil plans of rape and revenge? Will Arundhati remember her brave heritage and triumph over her immortal adversary?

Anushka excels in her double role as both the modern day Arundhati and the warrior princess.  In Jejamma mode she is masterful and determined, while in the modern day avatar Anushka manages very well to convey the despair and madness as Pasupathi torments Arundhati with images of her family’s fate.  She carries the film, and manages to be compelling, beautiful and convincing. However, there are some scenes later in the film that drag on for far too long. There is really only so much whimpering and scrambling that Anushka can do in her modern day character before the impact of her reactions fades. The young actress Divya Nagesh who played the young princess Arundhati was a delight to watch as she faced down the original Pasupathi.   Sonu Sood appeared to revel in his role and conveyed the total depravity of his character with great gusto and much eye twitching madness.  He seemed to be having such a great time as the completely evil Pasupathi and we just love him in this total manic mode! There is a downside to this wholehearted effort. He is just having too much fun and it detracts enormously from the characterisation. In some scenes he looks like he is barely restraining laughter and as a result Pasupathi just isn’t really evil enough to be truly frightening. As the second half was quite drawn out and hinged on Arundhati’s fear of Pasupathi, the lack of real menace did make the film feel overly long and the uneven pace was jarring.  Sayaji Shinde puts in a very credible performance as the knowledgeable fakir, and we loved seeing Manorama as the old servant who fills in the back story for modern day Arundhati and us.

The music is well integrated into the drama, and all songs serve a purpose. The cinematography is excellent and both the set and costume design really enhance the story. The special effects are for the most part used well, but there is a tendency to overdo things. The blood and gore team were especially enthusiastic!

The novel (to us) use of death by coconut was dramatic but repetitive and once again, key scenes dragged on a bit too long to sustain the drama. The climax of the film seems to stop and start. Modern day Arundhati had to scramble around crying and panicking for ages until the two storylines started to piece together for the conclusion. We theorised that the director still had a couple of days and half the blood budget left to use and decided to just go for it. The ending is bloody and violent and yet uplifting once it really gets going.

Heather says: I loved this film.  The two leads are fantastic and the child princess Arundhati does a really good job for such a young actress.  The story is very heavily focused on Anushka, and this is probably one of the film’s flaws in that the other characters don’t ever really engage us.  Sonu Sood is totally manic, which makes for some great viewing but not necessarily the best approach for his character. His Pasupathi was too cartoonish to ever be scary, particularly in the latter half of the film where the heavy breathing began to become wearing.  However, he was very watchable and certainly seemed to be making the most of his time in the film.  There were a few too many plot points clashing with each other at the end, and modern day Arundhati was just a little too wimpy. But still a very watchable film – I give this 4 ½ stars.

Temple says: I really enjoyed seeing a tough yet feminine heroine driving what is for the most part an action film. Anushka is stunning in this, and deserved the critical acclaim and awards. I like Sonu Sood but his hamming annoyed me. It wasn’t really the role for a lighthearted villain and would have benefited from a more menacing performance. As it was, he reminded me of a character from an old TV series – Catweazle. You can go look that up and see what I mean! The film really is the story of the bitter enmity between Arundhati and Pasupathi so that lack of serious venom detracted a bit from the overall impact. The pacing was all over the place too – some scenes dragged on far too long, while others rushed through interesting bits of the back story. The modern day avatar of Arundhati didn’t get much to do apart from crying and running until towards the end of the story.  But thanks to the amazing screen presence of Anushka the film is absolutely rivetting at times.  I give this 4 stars – it would  have been less except for her extraordinary performance.

Komaram Puli

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Once again we ventured to the cinema on an unsubtitled adventure. The session screening time had been changed a couple of times due to various delays with the film’s release. So it came as no surprise at all to still be waiting for the 9:30pm show to start at 11:00pm! We eventually staggered out of the theatre at 2:00am. Bear that, and our language issues in mind as we try and unravel Komaram Puli.

The crowd reaction was amazing. In the hour or so we were waiting, we had ample opportunity to perfect our Pawan Kalyan chants. The crowd favourite was “Twinkle twinkle little star, Pawan Kalyan Powerstar!”, and the roof almost came off before the film even started!

Not understanding Telugu wasn’t going to be an issue for this film, as there was no way we were going to be able to hear any of the star dialogues. The crowd started cheering, screaming, even crying, as soon as the credits began to roll and it didn’t stop. Some fans had carefully pre-cut strips of paper to hurl in the air at key moments, other more spontaneous types just tore up newspapers as the spirit moved them.

Now to the film.

The opening sequence is violent, shocking and full of portents. A woman goes to the police to try and find her husband or to follow up on his murder, and ends up being beaten half to death by Manoj Bajpai (who is the man who offed the husband). She escapes and through the blessings of god and the shelter of a local temple, her pregnancy comes to term. Her son learns to march on the path of righteousness while in the womb – and that is not an attempt at poetic license. Its an accurate description of the films visuals. He grows up to become:

A charismatic, dedicated and honest policeman – Komaram Puli –  who vows to take on crime and corruption. We never had a hope of getting all the detail of the very fast talking Puli’s dialoges but we believe it went something like “I swore an oath to serve my country and its people without fear or favor. Some of you are a disgrace to the uniform and could afford to shed a few kilos. Get your act together, sit up straight or I will take you down”. Or something. Anyway – he is a good cop struggling with a police force that is at best lazy, and at worst corrupt.  For all his talking he is a man of action – the opening action sequence featuring Pawan Kalyan and some excellent product placement is packed full of thrills and stunts that had the audience going wild.

Now, answer this question. You have a terrorist with a bomb strapped to his body. You can kill him by dropping him from a helicopter, shooting him or detonating the bomb. What to do? If you chose “all of the above”, you are going to love this film!

The installation of special phone booths allow people to call Puli’s team direct and report their law and order problems. On receipt of a phone call from the special “Bat Phone”, Puli and team leave their high tech HQ and seem to be able to arrive anywhere in Hyderabad within mere minutes – another tipoff that this is fiction, as we all read the endless tweets about celebs stuck in traffic in Hyderabad. They start to beat the corruption out of the force – literally.

In addition to this, Puli Force are on the trail of a terrorist master-mind called Nixon, and local crimelord Saleem, Manoj Bajpai back on the scene, this time in a distinguished grey wig and moustache.

Oh, and there is always time for romance. Especially when the girl is a crazy stalker with a theatrical streak and your mother approves of her. Puli never stood a chance once Nikesha Patel and her friends decided he was the one for her. Right down to the most bizarre marriage ceremony, he is railroaded by the women in his life, but its all for his own good.

Now that love has kindly provided a likely target for hostile forces, a romantic night at home is rudely interrupted by vampire ninjas in V for Vendetta masks. The outfits are never explained, but neither are many other things. Deal with it. We did.

The film has many heroic dialogues. Every time Pawan Kalyan brandished his index finger towards the camera, the audience went wild. We will never know what exactly his message was, but we are pretty sure no one else could hear it either.

Pawan Kalyan has an excellent enigmatic walk, which we believe is essential for all film heroes. He also excels in the high adrenalin action sequences, and looks totally convincing in these scenes. Sadly, he doesn’t seem to have inherited the dance gene that runs in his family. He does try, and in the “Powerstar” song he does come close. But perhaps we were blinded by the fabulous costume:

On the subject of costumes, we noticed on arrival at the cinema that all the boys in the ticket office were wearing the same style of red and black scarf. We did wonder, but not for long:

Now THAT is star power!

Unlike so many other filmi mothers, Saranya played an important role in the action. She was no passive victim standing on the sidelines and weeping for her boy. She delivered powerful and moving dialogues and was clearly the strength behind her son. And never, ever discount the power of a mother’s tear.

While overall we found this highly entertaining, the film does have serious flaws. The songs seem to be misplaced in the narrative and this gives the feeling that the film is disjointed. The climax is muddled by having two villains and apparently running out of a plot for one of them. The final confrontation between Puli and Saleem is very heavy on the dialogue and slows the conclusion of the film down. However, the final few frames are truly amazing and left the audience stunned (although still screaming).

This was our first taste of Powerstar Mania and it was just awesome. The screaming, cheering and applause never stopped right til the very end. Which, we will remind you, was at 2:00am. While we would give the film itself 3 and 1/2 stars, we give the audience 5 stars!

Style

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Style is a story about overcoming adversity and keeping yourself nice no matter what the temptation.  From the opening titles sequence showing disabled kids dancing, the message is there – Dance is joyous and belongs to all. It is a traditional aspirational tale of a boy from the disadvantaged side of society achieving his dream, of a man who overcomes tragedy to find triumph and the power of love in all its forms.  Written and directed by Lawrence, who also stars and choreographs, Style is a dance extravaganza with something for everyone’s tastes.

Prabhu Deva is Ganesh, a star of the dance competition circuit. He has won high profile dance competitions and his future seems assured. We will tell you now – we love Prabhu Deva. He is a lanky, unlikely looking hero who is transformed when he dances.

His main rival in these competitions is Anthony, and we first see Ganesh beating Anthony to a place in the regional finals.

Anthony (he is evil – we know this because he has a spiral perm and sneers a lot so we will call him Evil Anthony from now on) and his crazy brother (with terrible cornrow braids) put paid to their rival’s dancing days in a rigged accident which causes Ganesh to lose both his legs. Anthony will be recognisable as that backing dancer with the long permed hair from many Hindi films.


Of course Ganesh’s sponsors desert him as he can no longer dance, and to add insult to injury, Evil Anthony becomes the new regional champion by default.

Meanwhile, Lawrence plays Raghava;  a young man with big dreams but without the means to make them reality. He is in search of his long lost mother, and passes his days working as a cleaner in a local dance school. There is a somewhat troubling bit of back story to Ragahava’s character but it doesn’t crop up until late in the film and seemed quite unnecessary. He is of course a phenomenally talented dancer but due to his lowly status, is never given a chance to fulfil the promise he made to his mother that he would become  famous. He lives with his friends, all of whom have menial jobs and share the dream of dancing professionally and running a dance school. Despite a few breaks, nothing is helping them make the leap and indeed there are many setbacks. We enjoyed this song for many reasons, not least because it was very educational as to place names and foods. And they look a bit like The Wiggles:

Raghava, rather endearingly and totally understandably, is obsessed with Chiranjeevi. The presence of Megastar Chiru, real or imagined, sparks some of the best and funniest scenes in the film, including a fight sequence worthy of Jackie Chan.

Lawrence has a likeable screen presence and is certainly suited to the physicality of the role. We believe that the best dancers also excel in the fight scenes as they draw on their  gymnastic abilities and timing rather than just relying on muscle. And he is such an amazing dancer that some of the more incredible plot points don’t matter so much.

Ganesh is depressed and frightened of what his life will be without dance and of being dependant on his younger sister for support.   Raghava is oppressed by lack of opportunity but determined to keep trying to fulfil his dreams of a mother and a career.  After a pep talk by his sister, Ganesh determines that he will find new dancers to take on Evil Anthony and his nasty looking backing dancers. After some depressing but very funny auditions (think Agadoo), Ganesh finds Raghava and crew performing a tribute to his last dance routine on a TV dance show. Destiny has got its act together at last!

There is also some romance in the air. Shruthi, played by Charmi, is a student at the Western Dance School where Raghava cleans. He should have known she was the wrong girl after seeing her audition to Britney’s “Oops I Did It Again” complete with wardrobe malfunction. Raghava went to her rescue and was instantly smitten. We see his heart break as Charmi reveals she has been using him to make her college friend Raja jealous enough to express his feelings. Oblivious to the damage she has done to Raghava, she offers him the first wedding card for her upcoming marriage.

Raghava and the boys move in with their guru, and undertake an exhausting training montage. Ganesh’s sister Priya, played by the lovely Kamalini Mukherjee, develops feelings for Raghava as she sees how he treats her beloved brother, and his amazing dance style. Raghava remains oblivious to Priya, who is a classical dancer, for much of the film despite her well-mannered flirting and her romantic daydreams.

Hitting the big time means big money, and to compete the guys need sponsors – the sponsors that had deserted Ganesh.  A quick trip to the local discotheque with a dance off to show their Style, and they manage to gain the support they need. Success is beckoning and spirits are high!

But this is a film and things cannot run so smoothly for our clean living heroes. Tragedy strikes, and darkness looms in the guise of spiral-permed Evil Anthony who is determined to win at any cost.

Again.

Before the big competition Raghava’s friends are kidnapped by Evil Anthony’s even more evil brother.  The only person more evil than these two guys is their hairdresser.

Raghava tells Ganesh they have gone to the temple as he has been told to keep their whereabouts a secret if he wants to ever see them again.  The competition has started, the boys are needed to dance, Ganesh and the sponsors are frantic. Time for one of the big guns – Nagarjuna! Somehow (we never know how) within minutes Nagarjuna finds the factory where the boys are being held hostage, rescues our heroes and gets them to the dance competition in time to compete. There is a minor detail of star performer Raghava having gunshot wounds to his legs, but that cannot stop him. It was a very nice touch by the makeup team to make the bloodstains on his costume get bigger the more he danced, and also to provide a small pool of blood at his feet as the competition progressed!  They are not out of peril yet. A further attempt to remove them from the competition is thwarted by CHIRU!

The time for the final dance-off is nigh and of course it comes down to the good guys of team Ganesh versus the black pleather clad Anthony. We were quite concerned by the flimsy dancefloor that seemed to buckle under the impact of Lawrence and his flying feet but after surviving heartbreak, thugs and guns we knew it would take more than that to stop him. Who will win? Do you need to ask? Dance is the winner!

Heather says: I love the idea behind this film; that you can overcome all of your difficulties if you can face them with courage.  The dancing children at the beginning were such a testament to the power of music to inspire everyone to dance no matter who you are or your situation in life.  And as this has always been our philosophy that dance will cure a myriad of ills, it really is a favourite film.  This is everything a movie about dance should be.  It focuses on the love of dance and how this can touch on every aspect of life.  Ganesh and Raghava both live to dance, and it shows in the joyous nature of their performances.  Every dance style is there, from classical to hip hop, and everything in between!  High points of this film for me are a hero who worships Chiranjeevi, a song dedicated to Chiranjeevi and a guest appearance by the man himself! And of course the number and quality of the songs.

The dancing in this film is almost a character by itself and the double of Prabhu Deva and Lawrence makes for some great performances.  The other dancers do really well to keep up, and the children are just great.  Although I love the dancing in this film and think the performances are fantastic, I am deducting points for the slightly silly plot.  4 stars from me.

Temple says: Style is such a fun film to watch. It has great songs and dancing, and a real sense of joy about dance. It’s a cliched story, but it works, and has me cheering for the good guys every time. There are many little tributes throughout the film – Michael Jackson’s influence is apparent, but there are nods to MC Hammer, Fred Astaire and of course South Indian film heroes.  I love watching Prabhu Deva. He is a genius and his joy in dancing is contagious and uplifting. I am a big Fred Astaire fan, having grown up watching his films with my grandparents, and there is a similarity in that both men are plain and unprepossessing until they dance – and then they transform into charismatic, amazing, radiant stars. I was curious to see if Lawrence could carry a film. It’s a big leap from being a featured dancer or choreographer to holding an audiences attention as a hero, and I think he tailored this film to really show his strengths. The supporting cast is good, and the humour is well embedded into the plot so there isn’t a clunky comedy track to bog the film down. I will never object to a film that wants to feature Chiranjeevi, especially when his appearance is an affectionate and humorous send-up of his own legend.  Style is a simple story, told fairly well, and boosted by some fantastic performers. I give it 4 stars.