First Take: 2022—When Superstars like Akshay Kumar, Ranbir Kapoor, Vijay Deverakonda failed their fans

What a terrible blow it was to see marquee names reduced to a maa-ki aankh kind of frustration and rage among the audience. In the South there was a time when audiences would rip the seats and burn effigies of actors when they felt let down.

Luckily, no effigies were burnt of Akshay Kumar after Samrat Prithviraj even when it didn’t work, largely because Akshay Kumar looks like he has never gotten on top of a horse in his life. I am sure that is not entirely the case: while holidaying with his family he must have had many opportunities to trot till he dropped. But this one was not about touristic trotting.

Akshay, a fine actor in some films specially Hera Pheri and Airlift, seems to forget that he was not in this for the ride. That he was supposed to be playing a Hindu ruler who was a fair and just warrior who gave his enemy so much slack that it he(the enemy) just felt lucky, and Prithviraj was a feminist long before Mary Wollstonecraft. So when he marries the adamant Sanyukta (who fell in love with Prithviraj without seeing him, Tinder dating being some time away from Sanyukta’s self-induced courtship) and suggests that she join him in his durbar as an equal, Akshay makes it sound like he is inviting his screen wife to smoke pot with him.

The actor, for all his earnestness (don’t miss the real pearl necklace and the designer jewelry) just doesn’t get the point. As played by Akshay Kumar, Prithviraj Chauhan is a warrior and a feminist and also bit of a wimp, like Shahid Kapoor’s Ratan Singh, that upright somewhat prissy ruler in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat, who insisted on sleeping with the enemy (in a manner of speaking) although he gets repeatedly backstabbed.

Ranbir Kapoor another super-dependable actor under the best of circumstances delivered a thundering dud in Shamshera . Ranbir Kapoor never fails to surprise. I always thought he would never be able to do a film worse than Abhinav Kashyap’s Besharam in his career. But just nine years later Ranbir has upped the trash level with a pseudo-historical that suddenly makes us look more kindly at producers Yash Raj’s last historical Samrat Prithviraj. Abandoning his habitual subtly empathetic approach to his character Ranbir Kapoor, whom we all love as an actor, romances loud acting as though acting were going out of fashion. And if there is one thing that this Kapoor is not, it is unfashionable. Ranbir sinks into his double role of father-outlaw and son-outlaw with the kind of hammy self assurance that Sunil Dutt adopted in his rightly popular dacoit dramas. Ranbir starts off playing his grandfather Raj Kapoor in Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai. He is playful, mischievous, innocent and politically disaffected. Then Ranbir’s character does a flip flop. He wants to be Sunil Dutt in Mujhe Jeene Do…Or is it Yash in KGF?

Lately, Prithiviraj Sukumaran has been very active on screen, having starred in seven Malayalam films in the last two years, of which Ayyappanum Koshiyum is by far the most outstanding.I came away from his Kuduva with mixed feelings. The veteran director Shaji Kailas who has worked in the past with Malayali legends like Suresh Gopi and Mohanlal, seems to have made this film with the sole purpose of spotlighting Prithviraj’s star power. To that extent, Kuduva sends off the right signals initially. But eventually the protagonist Kuduva comes across as way too tolerant of his enemies.

Although Kuduva clearly states that he doesn’t believe in the Biblical tenet of non-violence and a sigh for an eye, so to speak, his action or rather inaction speaks for itself, when two evils cops Chandy (Vivek Oberoi, a portrait of moustache-twirling menace) and Dominic (Kalabhavan Shajohn) wreak havoc on Kuduva and his family of wife and three children.

Kuduva is sent off to prison by his adversaries who then proceed to raid his home, thrash his neighbour (who loses his hearing power). Somewhere in all this tortuous vendetta, there is molester priest Father Robin(Rahul Madhav) who ,weirdly, barges into Kuduva’s house and tries to rape his wife Elsa (Samyuktha Menon) in a dispute over a piano.

In the quest to add weight to the massy plot, Kuduva goes South and never quite finds it way back. The narrative is over-burdened with incidents, and very little payoff to justify the clogged narrative. Even when Kuduva’s wife is violated and his neighbour assaulted our hero stares in a growling silence.

For all its faults, Kuduva gives Prithiviraj the chance to be impressively implosive. The action scenes where he takes on the goon in his mundu (the traditional Malayali lungi-styled white lower cloth) are the highlights of the show.

Prithviraj brings an anal elegance to the physical fights. I wish there was more action and less verbosity. There are way too many verbal conflicts between Prithviraj and Vivek Oberoi. During one of them Prithviraj’s insults Oberoi’s mother, father and specially abled son. Heroes don’t get personal. Not in our cinema.

The eminently prolific Malayalam director Shahji Kailas gets a massy performance from Prithviraj Sukumaran one of Indian cinema’s most durable star-actors, in Kuduva. But the star is capable of much more. Prithviraj has restricted his versatility and star power largely to Malayalam cinema. We saw him in a Hindi disaster title Aiyya many years ago with Rani Mukerji . He will be back in Bade Miyan Chote Miyan in 2023.

Vijay Devarakonda was a huge letdown in Liger . The narrative undertakes a spiral downwards that writer-director Puri Jagannadh seems incapable of controlling. Forget any sign of restrain, Puri seems to have no idea where the plot’s upper torso ends and the rectum begins. This is a film for the idiots by the idiots. The actors are largely hams with Ramya Krishnan taking the cake. Deverakonda sports a trendy stammer for no other reason except to give his character more hurdles on the way to the final victory which is snatched away by the most botched up climax I’ve seen in any cinema.

Ranveer Singh in Cirkus is every clown’s nightmare. He tries hard to be controlled and funny in a Rohit(we can ignore the ‘hit’ part of his name for the time being) Shetty film. This is akin to trying to drink your protein shake on a rollercoaster. Ranveer’s film wants to take us for joyous ride. Instead it turned to be the most disappointing year-ender of the decade.

Mohanlal considered the God of acting by his fans in Kerala, shocked the world with his hamming in Monster. Mohanlal goes around in a turban pretending to be a Sardarji. The performance, if we may call it that, is so parodic it is an insult to the entire Sikh community. Would Mohanlal like it if the Malayalis were similarly parodied? Why Mohanlal Sir why? I have always admired his work. The bedrock of believability that he brings to his characters, and the understated performances have been with us for more than forty years, leaving his fans, indebted. So to paraphrase ABBA, thank you for the movies, thanks for all the joy they’ve been bringing, who could live without them, I ask in all honesty?

And in all honesty, what on earth made Mohanlal do a Rajinikanth in his previous film Aaraattu? Every frame is dedicated to glorifying Mohanlal’s august presence. Every shot is targeted at telling the world what a great soul he is. As if we need to be reminded of his greatness! This kind of self-glorification suits Rajnikanth, not Mohanlal . We come to Mohanlal on every release with great expectations. What do we see in Aaraattu? A three hours’ long love letter to Mohanlal’s sweet self. There are more than forty characters in this film. I am sorry I saw only Mohanlal in every frame. And if not Mohanlal , then characters talking about him with that mix of awe and veneration that went of style with N T Rama Rao’s generation.

Today’s audience in every part of India looks for relatable heroes, vulnerable, even weak yet determined, like Thomas Tovino in Minnal Murali or earlier, Prithviraj in Mumbai Police, or Jayasurya in Sunny.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.

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