Adipurush movie review: Ramayana deserves better than this cringefest with wooden Lord Rama, cartoonish Ravana

Director: Om Raut

Cast: Prabhas, Saif Ali Khan, Kriti Sanon, Sunny Singh, Devdatta Nage

Where to watch: Theatres

Rating: 1.5 stars

Perhaps one of the most awaited and anticipated Indian films of recent times and certainly the most talked about, Adipurush released in theatres with a weight of expectations on its shoulders and a ton of baggage along with it. Adapting Ramayana isn’t easy. It has only been done well a handful of times ever, and one of them was an animated feature. Om Raut attempts to do the impossible here, by merging Ramayana’s essence with modern storytelling and technology. And sadly, the end result is a jumbled mess that is incoherent, amateur, and quite badly done, to be honest.

Adipurush stars Parabhas as Raghava (Lord Rama), who must battle Ravana (Saif Ali Khan) to rescue his abducted wife Janaki (Kriti Sanon). It is a familiar tale told in a new way with modern technology. The director made an interesting choice to start the story with a prologue talking about the early years of Raghava but the story truly begins just before the abduction of Sita. That means the film is fast-paced and covers some ground in its three-hour duration, without skipping over important events.

But this does present with a conundrum too. By essentially starting the story with Act 2, you are depriving the audience of a chance to fall in love with the characters. The story moves quickly and we are made to believe that Raghava is so charismatic that everyone falls in love with him instantly. But it never justifies that due to paucity of time. We are supposed to fill in the gaps with our knowledge of Ramayana. A good self-contained story should not take that route.

There begin the problems for Om Raut. With the characters already feeling alien (with names Raghava and Janaki instead of Ram and Sita alienating them further), the viewer struggles to connect with the emotions of the protagonists. The casting is also questionable. Prabhas is a fine actor and a huge star but he is too dour, too sullen to be Rama. His eyes lack the gentle and kind touch of the image of Lord Rama most Indians have grown up with. He is at home when Rama is  warrior but fumbles badly when the character’s soft side is on display. His acting is too wooden and even Sharad Kelkar’s exemplary Hindi dubbing can’t save him. Kriti Sanon looks absolutely stunning but feels too ‘modern’ to be ita. It’s hard to pin point where her characterisation goes wrong but she lacks the simplicity of the original character a lot.

Ravana could have been the saving grace of the film if done right. Saif Ali Khan tries his best with a commendable effort but director Om Raut does him dirty. Everything from the character’s look to mannerism (including that cartoonish walk) is so over the top that you can never take him seriously, let alone consider him intimidating.

But the biggest Achilles’ heel of the film are the visuals. The VFX, which is said to have been done in hundreds of crores, is not up to the mark at all. There’s no point comparing with Hollywood films that have much larger budgets but just for the sake of visual aesthetics, the visual effects and CGI are jarring. The finesse is lacking, and the vanara sena looks more cartoonish than several animated versions. Ravana’s ten heads are an improvement from the trailer but still quite laughable. And I wonder if the makers did something to Prabhas’ face because that could explain why he seems emotionless in several parts.

The battle sequences are a mishmash of Lord of the Rings, Planet of the Apes, and Game of Thrones. Sadly, they include the worst of these titles and not the best. So we get large-scale dark battlefields with CGI soldiers and very incoherent fighting. A few artillery scenes did suprise me with their visual brilliace but, by and large, the visuals of Adipurush were a letdown. And to think that was supposed to be the film’s USP.

There are a few minor positives in the film. Ajay-Atul’s music and background score sets the mood perfectly and is hair-raising in some scenes. Sharad Kelkar voicing Raghava in the Hindi version is a nice cherry on top. The script is tight, so you will never be bored, even if slightly irritated. But the dialogue are pedestrian at best. In places where the filmmakers have tried to infuse humour with some modern lingo (picture this: Hanuman says Lanka laga denge), it is downright cringe.

Adipurush could have been the film the Indian film industry needed and looked up to – an example of how to make a modern epic based on the rich cultural treasure trove of stories our country has. In the end, it becomes a barely-watchable mess because the makers failed to understand that you don’t need grandeur to tell a simple tale like Ramayana. You need to undertsand the core emotions, which Adipurush does not.