Saturday, April 11, 2020

Blame it on the wind

I have to give Pokkiri Raja (2016) credit for daring, if nothing else.  Making a movie about yawning is risky, because yawns are famously contagious, and you really don't want the audience yawning their way through your action comedy.

Mild-mannered computer programmer Sanjeev (Jiiva) has a powerful and powerfully infectious yawn, capable of putting an entire office to sleep.  Because of his terrible yawn, he loses his job and his girlfriend on the same day.  Fortunately he gets a new job, thanks to his friend Mojo (Yogi Babu), and meets a new girl, Sunitha (Hansaki Motwani).  Because of a series of ridiculous coincidences, Sanjeev is convinced that Sunitha is an alcoholic, but she's actually an enthusiastic social activist dedicated to literally cleaning up the streets, most notably by riding around the city on a water truck and spraying men who are urinating in public.

Ranjeev is eventually convinced to take a turn atop the water truck.  Unfortunately, the first person he sprays is "Cooling Glass" Guna (Sibiraj), a vicious gangster who just finished murdering a woman.  Guna is publicly humiliated and arrested, and he vows to track down the guy on the water truck and make him pay.  Fortunately(?) by the time he gets out of jail, Sanjeev's yawn has evolved; it now produces a tremendous wind which shatters Guna's trademark sunglasses, blinding him.  With Guna temporarily out of the way, Sanjeev has time to pursue a romance with Sunitha and explore the nature of his powers.

And once again I am making the movie sound more coherent than it actually is.  There is a plot, and it more or less hangs together, but the plot is only there as a delivery vehicle for goofy fight scenes, dodgy special effects, and incredibly broad physical comedy.  The film fully commits to its goofy premise, but that doesn't make it any less goofy, so the end result is a goofy movie.

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