Like the Baahubali films, Puli (2015) is a mytho-historical epic set in a fantastic version of India's past, in which a young man who was found in a river as a baby goes on a quest and discovers his true heritage. Puli is definitely not a Baahubali ripoff, though; leaving aside the fact that the movie came out only a few months after Baahubali: The Beginning, human culture is full of mystery babies pulled from rivers. The important thing is what happens next, and Puli definitely goes in its own direction.
Before we get to the baby, though, let's talk about the world. In this particular mythic age, much of India has been conquered by the vedhalam, a race of blue-eyed demons from far to the west. Rather than hang out in trees and ask kings questions about morality, though, these particular vedhalam do evil overlord stuff, terrifying villagers, demanding exorbitant taxes, and dragging the occasional unfortunate off to be sacrificed. The vedhalam are beautiful and terrible and too powerful for mortal men to fight, like a cross between rakshasa and Tolkien's elves, with superpowers lifted pretty directly from wuxia movies.
And then Vembunathan (Prqadhu) finds a baby in the river. Well, a baby and an egg. The baby grows up to be Marudheeran (Jospeh Vijay), who is naturally charming, fearless, and a skilled martial artist, while the egg hatches into Sooran (Karunas), a magical talking bird who isn't nearly as annoying as I feared. Marudheeran is determined to keep his village safe from the unstoppable demon-tyrants, even if that means he has to grovel to do it. He's also determined to win the heart of Pavazhamalli (Shruti Haasan), a childhood friend who has just returned to the village.
Marudheeran does manage to woo Pavazhamalli, and they are secretly married, but while he is away from the village attending to some family rituals, the vedhelam attack, murder Vembunathan, and kidnap Pavazhamalli. Because she was born under a full moon, she's a perfect human sacrifice, so Marudheen must rescue her from the fortress of the vedhalam queen Yavanna (Sridevi!) and her general Jalatharangan (Sudeep.) It's true that no human can stand up to the vedhalam, but the village priest happens to have been working on a magical potion which can give a human the strength and wire-fu powers of a vedhalam, but only for eight minutes.
Just as Baahubali draws heavily from the Mahabharata, Puli pulls from the Ramayana, with Asterix as Ram and a bird as Laxman. That's just the basic plot, though; Puli's influences are . . . eclectic. Rather than monkeys, Marudheeran befriends the villiputs, who are, as the name implies basically Lilliputians, and possibly also the brownies from Willow. The villiput princess Einstein (Vidyullekha Raman) joins him on the quest and they seek the counsel of the turtle from The Neverending Story. Marudheeran gets in a fight with a panther. He meets a cyclops. And it only gets stranger from there.
But while the worldbuilding is a glorious mess, the actual plot is a fairly straightforward quest narrative. The real fun comes from the performances. Sridevi in particular is delightful. She creates an evil queen who is one part Galadriel, one part Wicked Witch of the West, chewing the scenery with style and elegance, whether she's presiding over a sinister dinner party or running up the wall during a swordfight.
I suspect that Puli is actually a bad movie, but if so it's a bad movie that I really enjoyed.
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