More gorillas than any other Indian movie.

 Adipurush (2023) is, among other things, a devotional film inspired by the Ramayana, so my usual rules apply: I'm not going to evaluate the movie based on its theology, I just want to see if it tells an entertaining story.

Ravana (Saif Ali Khan) is the rakshasa king of Lanka.  He's a devoted follower of Shiva who managed to earn a boon from Brahma (Bijay Anand), who promised that he could not be slain by any god or demon, during the day or at night.  And I'm sure there are no loopholes there!  Ravana may be evil, but he has tremendous style, as demonstrated by the hymn to Shiva he performs with four statues of himself as backup singers.

Ravana is approached by his sister Shurpanakha (Tejaswini Pandit), who reveals that she lost her nose in an attempt to win the affections of righteous prince Raghava (Prabhas) by killing his wife Janaki (Kriti Sanon).  Shurpanakha praises Janaki's beauty, and encourages Ravana to abduct the woman, which would allow him to avenge his sister and gain the most beautiful wife in the world in the process.  Ravana decides that this is a great idea and will have no negative consequences.

Raghava is the rightful heir to the throne of Ayodha, but in order to fulfill a boon requested by his stepmother, he gave up the throne and now lives in a cave in the woods with Janaki and his brother Shesh (Sunny Singh.)  Raghava and Shesh are righteous warrior archers able to create supernatural effects with their arrows, so abducting Janaki is difficult, but Ravana is clever.  He disguises a demon as a golden deer in order to draw the brothers away, then disguises himself as a mendicant sage in order to lure Janaki out of the protective force field that surrounds the cave.  (Yeah, Shesh can make force fields with his arrows.  He's a really good archer.)  Ravana succeeds, and flies away with Janaki on his giant bat.

Raghava needs an army to rescue Janaki.  Shesh suggests raising an army in Ayodha, but Raghava feels that that would violate his vow, so instead they go searching for the vanara king Sugriva (Guarrav Walia).  The vanara hero and demigod Bajrang (Devdatta Nage) joins them on their quest, and they help Sugriva regain his throne in exchange for an army.

Meanwhile, in Lanka, Ravana does his best to win Janaki's heart, offering her power and jewels and . . . well, mostly power and jewels.  This doesn't work, and Janaki chooses instead to sit under a tree and wait for Raghava, because, as she carefully explains to Ravana, Raghava is coming for her, and no boon is going to save him.

The special effects in Adipurush range from okay to not very good, but that's not really a problem for me.  The problem is that there are so many special effects.  Most of the backgrounds are CGI.  Most of the characters are CGI.  Even Ravana has been turned into an overly muscled giant who occasionally has ten heads.  Almost everything is fake, so nothing really feels real, giving the whole movie a weightless quality that blunts the impact of the emotional scenes and the outrageous stunts.

Lanka itself is also a bit distracting, because the design is very clearly inspired by Mordor, complete with orcs.  Almost everything in Lanka is black, including Ravana's "Golden Palace," and while I respect Ravana's commitment to the bit, it does make the scenes there feel less real, and it blunts the impact of Bajrang burning everything down, since it's all black, so how can you tell?

I did like some aspects of the production design.  The vanara range from ordinary looking monkeys to gorillas to "Planet of the Apes" style nobility to Bajrang, who is the most human looking while also having the best tail, and Jambavan (Roopesh Jadhav) is a bear, as expected.

Saif Ali Khan, meanwhile, has figured out that Ravana is the best part, and he's clearly having a good time chewing all the scenery despite having to act through a fog of CGI.

Is Adipurush a good movie?  Probably not.  I found it to be a reasonably entertaining film, the big dumb action movie adaptation of the Ramayana, but it's clear form reviews and ticket sales that the Indian audience isn't interested in a big dumb action movie adaptation of the Ramayana, especially when they have so many other adaptations to choose from. 

Not being a jerk does make a big difference.

Ru-Ba-Ru (2008) is an example of a surprisingly popular subgenre in which a bad boyfriend or husband is given a magical second chance to live key points of their relationship over again, like A Christmas Carol but with more kissing. 

Nikhil (Randeep Hooda) and Tara (Shahana Goswami) live together in a surprisingly spacious apartment in Bangkok.  They're happy, mostly, but the cracks are starting to show.  Tara wants to get married, or at least wants to introduce Nikhil to her parents or meet his parents - some sign that they've got an actual future together.  

On the other hand, Nikhil has a specific future in mind, and he's entirely focused on making it happen.  He's preparing for a big presentation at work, which means that he's far too busy to go to India to meet her parents, or remember their anniversary, or buy her flowers when she has a play opening that night, or speak to her politely for more than two sentences in a row . . .  After a brief conversation with a wise and mysterious cab driver (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) Nikhil tries to make up with Tara, but he's still prickly and focused on his own work, and once Tara realizes that he's invited his clients to their romantic post-show dinner, she storms off, gets into a cab (driven by the same mysterious cab driver) and dies when another car hits the cab.

Nikhil is devastated.  He goes home and collapses, but in the morning he wakes up with Tara next to him.  She's fine, and Nikhil quickly realizes that he has a literal second chance, and has a whole day to live over again.  But while things can change, events seem to fall into the same pattern; Tara doesn't burn her arm while making Nikhil a coffee, but she does burn her arm while ironing his shirt.  The mysterious cab driver advises him to just spend time with Tara and make her happy, so he tries.  He takes her to meet his mother (Rati Agnihotri), mending that broken relationship in the process.  He focuses on Tara's needs rather than his presentation.  He arrives on time to the play and actually pays attention.  And at the end of the evening, he gets in the cab.

Ru-Ba-Ru is tightly focused on the central story, without any of the branching subplots Bollywood movies like to indulge in.  However, there's not much top that main plot; the movie is less than two hours long, and it still feels padded in places.  

The real problem, though, is Nikhil.  He's self-centered, controlling, and tries to present every one of his mistakes as Tara's fault.  he's a walking collection of red flags, and while he does improve when given his second chance, he's still loving and attentive in a sort of controlling way, which makes it really hard to root for him.  On the other hand, he does make the right choice at the end, and he does so without expecting a happy ending.

What I like about the movie is that there's no attempt at an explanation for the repeated day.  The closest we get is the cab driver explaining that his job is to help those who have lost their way find their destination.  Is the cab driver actually Death?  Was Nikhil such a bad boyfriend that it broke the space time continuum?  It is a mystery.

It's the Village of People Who Don't Ask Follow Up Questions!

Superheroes are associated with cities; Superman protects Metropolis, Batman lurks in Gotham, and Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends hang out in New York City.  In India, though, things are different.  Sure, Krrish lives in Mumbai, but many of India's cinematic superheroes are rural, protecting India's wide open spaces.  And in Veeran (2023), the hero finds plenty of danger and adventure while confined to a single village.

When he was fifteen years old, Kumaran (Hiphop Tamizha Adhi) was struck by lightning and fell into a coma, so he was sent to Singapore to recover.  Fourteen years later, he returns to his native village of Veeranor and reunites with his childhood friends Sakkarai (Sassi Selvaraj) and Selvi (Athira Raj), along with his own skeptical father (Jeeva Ravi.)  Sakkarai assists his grandfather, who is both the village barber and the priest who maintains the shrine of local deity Veeran, though most of the villagers are completely indifferent.  Selvi, meanwhile, is about to enter an arranged marriage with an older man who doubles as comic relief (Muruganandum), though her family are fine with her hanging out with Kumaran as long as she's home to perform the necessary rituals.

The village is part of an experimental project by the JACL Corporation to produce power by firing lasers through a glass tube, but the planned route runs right through Veeran's shrine, and the priest absolutely refuses to let it be torn down. It's a technology that was designed to be used in rural areas, because if the tube loses containment it could lead to an explosion that wipes out all life along the entire line.  That's why Kumaran is here; he's been having visions of the village wiped out in a blue mushroom cloud.

It's not just the visions, though.  The lightning strike gave Kumaran a suite of low key super powers.  He can throw lightning bolts that are only powerful enough to knock people around rather than stop their hearts, control minds for ninety seconds at a time (though overuse of this ability hurts him and can lead to unconsciousness), and also has the uncanny power to befriend horses.  For reasons.  It's probably an extension of the mind control.

Thanks to his visions, Kumaran knows that JACL is up to something evil, so his plan is to disguise himself as the god Veeran in order to thwart them.  JACL doesn't appreciate the interference, and corporate bully Dhruv (R. Badree) to deal with him, later followed by Dhruv's brother Sarath (Vinay Rai), an evil scientist with a specialized poison that makes people explode within two minutes.  

Kumaran-as-Veeran is a superhero, but he's no Superman.  he's got a loosely thematic suite of abilities with some tight limits; the lightning can knock people around but isn't going to end the fight immediately, his mind control doesn't last long and can hurt him, he needs to be able to snap use any of his powers, and he has to wear a copper bracelet given to him by Sakkarai's grandfather or he'll lose control of his powers.  And all of those limitations factor into the plot.  The scope of Veeran is smaller than a lot of superhero movies.

But while the scope is smaller, the stakes are still high.  Sure, Veeran is fighting to protect one village, but the village is full of people, and they matter.  The restricted setting means that we get to meet most of them and see that they matter.  The plot doesn't have to involve collapsing multiverses to be meaningful.

Veeran is not a perfect superhero movie; I don't think we ever find out exactly what the evil plot is, and there's a lot of comic relief here that just doesn't translate well.  Still, the leads are engaging, the villains are definitely villainous, and the hero has to struggle to save the day, with a lot of help from his horse.  It's refreshingly grounded without trying to be gritty.

(An evil power company called JACL and run by a merciless scientist?  That's got to be a stealth Shaktimaan reference, right?  It's not just me?)