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.