Vrusshabha, released in Telugu by Geetha Film Distributors, is currently showing in theatres. Let's find out what the film is about.
Plot:
Aadi Deva Varma (Mohanlal) is a successful businessman whose structured life revolves around his son (Samarjit Lankesh). But when his son returns from their ancestral village, Aadi’s reality begins to fracture. Haunting visions of a past life as the powerful King Raja Vijayendra Vrusshabha (Mohanlal, again) take hold of his mind, blurring the line between history and the present. The reincarnation story is about how the businessman was connected with his son in their previous births.
Post-Mortem:
Expecting big-spectacle cinema from Mollywood to be big-spectacle cinema is as criminally silly as expecting a human drama from Tollywood to be a human drama. These two film worlds are not supposed to stray into each other's territories on most days. Vrusshabha, with its extremely basic past-life regression plot, is a sorry imitation of the Magadheera template. "The past never dies. It bleeds into every birth", its trailer said, foreshadowing the bleeding of the poor man's Magadheera into 2025.
The scale of the movie is evident right in one of the earliest scenes where a business summit takes place in something like a medium-range function hall that could have been decked up to fool gullible investors. In the first half, the lead man is Samarjit Lankesh and it takes time for the reality to sink in. Mohanlal is reduced to do dad things - not the dad of Sandeep Reddy Vanga but of Telugu TV serials. He probably shot for the entire first half from his home. There is a scene set in the kitchen (fortunately, it doesn't look like the kitchen of a wedding hall) where the son poetically likens Mohanlal's cheeks to rava idlis or something. This is less unlikeable compared with how the slow-motion frames test your patience.
The reincarnation element and the screenplay format in the flashback portions don't build on the fundamentals defined by SS Rajamouli's Magadheera a good seventeen years ago. Even when the main characters are talking about a major crisis, even the involvement of a seasoned actor like Mohanlal doesn't keep the scene from feeling cold. The generic Telugu dubbing makes the aural quality of the movie feel all the more pedestrian.
The historical episodes take off in a full-fledged manner in the second hour. And this is where the film evolves from being 'neerasam' cinema' to 'neerasam' pro max cinema. The royal court scenes are unenergetic despite some level of novelty in their premise. The action choreography by Peter Hein, Stunt Silva, Ganesh Kumar and Nikhil is primitive. Sam CS' music is underwhelming.
Nayan Sarika of AAY fame plays a para-psychologist who has more faith in Babas than in Sigmund Freud. Telugu actors like Ajay, Ali and Bhadram are wasted.
Closing Remarks:
Despite the presence of a legendary performer like Mohanlal, Vrusshabha is a lackluster attempt at the reincarnation genre that feels like a dated, low-budget imitation of Magadheera.
