Movie Review: 'Bahubali'

An infant is shown floated on the surface of river, backed by a royal palm of a dead queen, Sivagami, who had surreptitiously escaped from her kingdom of Mahishmati to save this child – her grand-nephew, and son of Bahubali (her nephew) and Devasena (his wife). The child is raised by a tribal family and is named Shiva. He grows up to be a cheerful, free-wheeling, mother-lover soul preferring to stay mostly bare-bodied and is shown insanely crazed about getting on top of the waterfall and the mountain causing it. Neither the village folks nor he has any clue why he was so psyched about it. Making true the universal saying Boys are boys, Shiva too is no different. After repeated attempts over the years, a girl’s face-mask becomes the strongest motivation for him to achieve his age-old goal. He does reach at the top to find the girl, and finds her surrounded by blue butterflies and loses his heart to her. His freshly sparked testosterones make him chase wherever she goes dancing which is captured by a labored song, as uncalled for as I feel Uday Chopra’s presence in all of his movies.

To extend this bad patch of the movie further, Shiva seems to have acquired a special talent for making tattoos without someone’s knowledge. Thinking that tattooing the chick free of cost would make her happy and fall for him, he draws tattoos whenever he finds a chance with her, without her knowledge, also without even knowing whether she likes such body-spoiling stuff or not. And that's what happens; she certainly isn't impressed with this cheap display of talent from a stranger. However when confronted, he manages to make her realize that he is the dude born to be her partner for life and she somehow agrees to it. Having seen the confidence and devotion in his talks and a couple of punches, she smartly passes the baton to him that was given to her – to free the former queen, Devasena, Shiva’s real mother – the fact unknown both to her and Shiva. She was chained by Bhallal Dev, the current ruler of Mahishmati, the elder brother of her late husband.

This Bhallal chap is introduced when a wild bull isn’t controlled by anyone. He takes charge and controls the bull like a manager treats an underperformer during appraisal and the bull ends up eating dust. His father was sidetracked (I am sure, politely) by his younger brother who was deserving of being a king. So he became one and ruled but he had to pass away as the destiny had decided so. After this, Bhallal's mother, Sivagami, an all powering, kickass lady with strategic insights, became a queen. She believed only a worthy would get the throne and after a decisive battle she announces that Bahubali, her orphaned nephew would be the king and offends her power-hungry son, Bhallal, and her good-for-nothing husband. It looks that both father and son had conspired to get Bahubali killed by the ready-to-kill senapati, Katappa, ruthlessly loyal to serve Mahishmati who confesses this secret by the end of the movie. And there SS Rajamouli calls it CUT for the first part of the sequel, leaving the audience hungry for the second one.

The visuals are more than amazing even though waterfall looks laughingly fake. VFX more than makes up during war scenes when the black heads are slashed through acrobatically deft weapon strokes by Bahubali and a customized sudarshan chakra, riveted onto the smart chariot of Bhallal Dev. This is one of the few movies where acting voluntarily sides to give way to charismatic spectacles in the fantasy world.