Too Many Wrongs Cannot Make Things Right For the Film
Rudhramadevi is among Telugu movies released this Friday, which is one of the Indian 3D, which is a period drama or call it the biopic of Rudrama Devi who was among the pivotal rules of Kakatiya dynasty over the Deccan Plateau and rare queens found in the history of India. The film is directed and written by Gunasekhar, which has Anushka Shetty, Allu Arjun, Vikramjeet Virk and Dana Daggubati. The film is further dubbed in Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi. The producer of the film is the director himself, who has ventured this project under the banner of Gunaa Team Works made with a budget of around 70 crore INR. Now, how about taking a plunge in the film to get the crux of the same as under:
Story/Plot
The Story of the film starts with Rudrama Devi with her birth giving the apt mythical begging for any film dealing with a queen. Ganapathi Deva – the king of Kakatiya dynasty are seen expecting an heir who is the Yuvraj to save the troubled regime. The kingdom is often under a constant threat from Kaktiyas from different neighbouring kingdom along with son Mahdeva Nayakudu. The Kakatiyas then gets a daughter; however, Devaiah (the Chankya of Kakatiya) convinces the king and queen not to reveal this truth to anyone. And then begins the upbringing of a girl like boy who is named Rudradevan. He learns all the skills, which the prince learns in any kingdom in order to become a fierce warrior to deal with the army. The kingdom falls under a bad turmoil, when the truth is finally downs that Rudhradevan is basically Rudhramadevi, and what goes the next turns the real gist of the film.
Script Analysis
One of the issues the period drama based movies faces is kind of freedom one can afford in order to tweak the history just to attract audience far and wide with a new appeal. If you find the characters and story breaching certain boundary and the infused fictional elements overshadowing the facts then the movies simply fail to do any justice to this genre. Rudhramadevi is no exception as it faces the same problem. Though the director called Gunasekhar has confessed that he has made a couple of changes making it a fictional story, hence the movie simply strikes like a commercial period drama even for the audience who are not aware about the history of the Rudrama Devi.
Star Performances
Talking about the performances, the director was wise enough to choose Anushka as she was phenomenal in her performance. Right from her top notch body language, he is able to showcase the character with best of the dexterity, however, the ordinary script failed to give enough opportunities to prove her worth for the character. Had this been a good script, she could have done much better. Similar is the story with the actors in the supporting roles, which were carried out Rana Daggubatti and Allu Arjun who remained utilised, however, at certain level, Bunny seemed to be miscast. On the other side, you have Prakash Raj and Suman who were seen giving the fittest impact on the silver screen unlike Anushka in her lead character but you can find Vikramjeet Virk simply failing flat on the ground with mediocre performance.
Screenplay, Direction, Music, Cinematography & other technical stuff
Unfortunately, the film is pitted with underwhelming kind of story, which comes from the filmmaker himself. This has hampered the screenplay to a great extent making it a half baked one and carried out in a hush-hush manner. It simply relies very much on telling rather than the showcasing making it simply implausible for the audience to connect with conditions that are showcased over the big screen. The only problem, which seems to be magnified out of proportion, comes out like a snail paced kind of narrative that often turns like a yawn kind of experience.
Talking about the titular character, not a single character was able to flesh out the right way. In order to make things bad to worse, the dialogues seemed pathetic especially in the second half, wherein most of the dialogues were like a preachy speech. With all said and done, a couple of sequences were able to implement the right way that becomes a saviour in striking a chord. The sword fighting scene (between Rana & Anushka) seemed okay but the twist after the intermission seemed less engaging. The war scenes also seemed very much artificial and lacked the grandeur online experienced in Bahubali. Talking about the music and cinematography, both remained okay but not par enough to boost up the entertaining value.
Rudhramadevi – Last Word
Too many wrongs cannot make things right, and Rudhramadevi is a classic example of this. Right from the poor story to dull screenplay and poor direction, there is hardly much to catch in this 3D period drama. Though the director had loads of scope to play with the script and embark with a power packed performance film, however, except the nice performance from Anushka Shetty, there is hardly anything to catch in the film. All these elements together make a mess and make the venture of the filmmaker unimpressive.
Rating – 2.5
