Bhagavanth Kesari Review

If meme volumes are anything to go by, then superstar Balakrishna - breaker of necks, slapper of thighs, twirler of moustaches - has a knack for being (unintentionally) funny. So one has certain expectations when Balayya teams up with Anil Ravipudi, director of the raucous comedies F2 (2019) and F3 (2022). But these expectations are only halfway-met in Bhagavanth Kesari, a massy action-comedy-drama mix that is funnier (intentionally) that any Balayya movie in recent times - and yet, not funny enough, not bold enough, not noise-making enough to be anything more than a middling film from a director that clearly wants to "uplevel" his way out of comedy.

Ravipudi's favorite trick is to combine a joke with a fight, and a fight with a joke, and call it a day. This works beautifully at times, as in the opening sequence where Bhagavanth breaks off a jail brawl - he is serving a 30-year sentence for, no doubt, a worthy crime - by belting out a gloriously off-pitch rendition of his viral performance of "Nee Kanti Chupullo" (go watch this original clip on Youtube). And it works again several minutes later - Bhagavanth is by then out of prison and now the sole guardian of orphaned Vijji (Sreeleela) - when he lights a cop's potbelly on fire and heats a cup of chai on it. Whatever the weapon or method of torture invoked on the bad guys - a cricket bat, an axe or a corkscrew - the undertones of cheekiness and humour keep you entertained.

Where then Bhagavanth Kesari starts to languish is when it catches the "social message" fever (currently infecting commercial cinema) and sneezes out a shallow scene or two about female strength. What we believe to simply be a sweet storyline about Bhagavanth's protectiveness towards Vijji "paapa", suddenly, almost violently, turns into a call to action on women's empowerment. At which point, Bhagavanth gatecrashes a school assembly and delivers a quick lecture on good-touch and bad-touch to a wide-eyed flock of five- and six-year-olds.

Whether Balayya is in his "feminist era", as one Twitter user put it, or, more likely, Ravipudi is trying to make amends for the misogyny of Sarileru Neekeevvaru, the male-sponsored feminism of Bhagavanth Kesari feels haphazard and out-of-syllabus - like it was obliged into the script to satisfy some invisible checklist. This sub-plot pulls focus from the film's villain - a one-legged monomaniacal businessman named Rahul Sangvi (Arjun Rampal). While Vijji gets several training montages - Bhagavanth wants her to join the army - Rahul Sangvi languishes in his penthouse suite, waiting to become relevant to the story again. The script builds Sangvi up as a ruthless power-broker only to forget him for large periods of time. Until the finale, he gets about as much screen time as the throwaway character of Kathyayini (Kajal Aggarwal), Kesari's love-interest and a psychologist who likes to start every sentence of hers with "As a psychologist..."

Balakrishna is such good fun to watch in the comedy sequences. Where other actors have to lunge and pull faces to make you laugh, Balayya can simply say a three-word dialogue in the flattest tone you ever heard and still have you in splits.

Sreeleela gets to put her famed agility to good use in her first big fight sequence of her career - and she blows you away. But it is the only saving grace of an otherwise juvenile, weepy performance. Her lower-lip pout when she throws a tantrum (adolescent girls do not behave this way, Anil) had me gagging.

Arjun Rampal makes a very sincere attempt at doing better than Sonu Sood as the token exotic villain, but he is not around long enough to make an impact.

Even though Bhagavanth Kesari is a happy twist on the typical hard-charging, dour mass movie, it has one too many "timepass" scenes and sub-plots that do little more than run out the clock to make this a noteworthy film. The peppiness and promise of the first scenes doesn't carry over till the end, and the movie ends a bit deflated. But if feeding the Balayya meme factory with fresh fodder is the ulterior motive of every Balayya film, then Bhagavanth Kesari delivers.