What makes Pushpa 2 float is Allu Arjun's magnetic performance. The actor really goes an extra mile to deliver the wildfire he promised, observes Mayur Sanap.
The opening stretch of Pushpa: The Rule has Allu Arjun dangling upside down.
He is Pushpa, the notorious criminal from Andhra Pradesh, who has come far away from homeland to put the record straight with the Japanese smuggling gang.
A series of slow-mo shots and some heavy dialoguebaazi later, Pushpa is shot in the chest and then cut to Chittoor where the actual story unfolds.
This entire Japan episode is never brought up again neither do we know how Pushpa escaped with his injuries, or how the red sandalwood smuggling syndicate, that Pushpa is now a leader of, mapped out international waters.
Truth is, the makers do not care about these details either, where logic is exchanged for spectacle. You realise the cool-looking action set piece you saw earlier on was just an excuse for the hero's mass entry.
And that is essentially the fuel Pushpa: The Rule runs on.
The story moves without any real sense of plot and characterisation. So what we have is this superficial concept that plays like the fan service of highest order.
Is fan service a bad thing?
Certainly not! Especially for a film like this that left a huge cultural impact back in 2021.
The sequel arrives three years later, which is promises to take ahead the legend of Pushpa Raj, but delivers only the celebration of Allu Arjun, the superstar.
If you are willing to savour that, like all the frenzied audience in my show were, you will have a blast. For anything else, Pushpa 2 is a bloated spectacle that can't decide what it wants to be other than an Allu Arjun vehicle.
The story beings where the first film left off.
We see Pushpa Raj (Allu Arjun) scaling new heights as he continues to rise from a street-smart daily wage labourer to a key figure in the red sandalwood smuggling syndicate.
He lives in a fancy bungalow in Chittoor with his wife Srivalli (Rashmika Mandanna) and mother (Kalpalatha). His flamboyant attire, jewellery and spiky hairdo show off his newly-acquired economic status.
Despite all the luxuries at his disposal, Pushpa is throttled by disdain he receives from half-brother Mohan Raj (Ajay), who scoffs at Pushpa for being an 'illegitimate' child.
Another trigger point is the police officer Bhanwar Singh Shekawat (Fahadh Faasil), who won't stop at anything to seek revenge for Pushpa hurting his ego. The cat-and-mouse game intensifies between the two men when Pushpa brazenly challenges Shekhawat to stop him from smuggling the large freight of red sanders out of the country.
Meanwhile, Pushpa also harbours plans to make his trusted aide MP Siddhappa (Rao Ramesh) the next chief minister as the current CM refuses to pose with Pushpa for a picture.
Director Sukumar, who has also written the story, whisks together multi-genre elements of an action film, crime fiction, and family drama that basically feels like Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham on steroids. All this, while catering to AA's star image.
The film designs a plot that is as dense as the forest where it was shot but once you dig beneath the surface, it's all fundamentally basic and predictable, strung together by a very flimsy script.
Sukumar tries to offer a little bit of everything in his incoherently busy script but instead, it amounts to a lot of nothing.
Over its whopping 3-hours-20-minutes runtime (that's 20 minutes more than Oppenhemier), we are subjected to endless servings of extravagantly over-designed set pieces and scenes of random mayhem that lean too heavily on AA's star aura to hide its lack of substance. And if at any point you're drifting away, Devi Sri Prasad's eardrum splitting BGM will make sure to keep you awake.
What makes Pushpa 2 float is Allu Arjun's magnetic performance, really the sprightly bunny of this world. In a few bright moments when Pushpa 2 works that is only because this performance works. The actor really goes an extra mile to deliver the wildfire he promised.
Him dressed up as Goddess Kali and emanating fury is viscerally exciting, and sets up the film's most memorable sequence later on. It is a ferocious performance and AA makes it all work even in moments when you scratch your head wondering where it's all leading to.
The crushing disappointment is Fahadh Faasil whose deranged cop Shekhawat could have been so much more.
What was hinted as epic showdown between him and Pushpa ends up a lukewarm ego clash that fails to achieve the desired launching effect of their dynamic. Without anything significant to play around his character, Faasil is relegated to generic villain, whose memo, I doubt, was to show a variation of Ranga from Aavesham.
In a course correction of sorts, Sukumar holds himself back from rampant misogyny of the first film with Rashmika's character.
Srivalli is a hard-boiled masala heroine who is shown to have some agency in the men's world. But again, it is not as consistent.
While she takes authority for what's right for her in a few scenes, for most part she is seen as a dedicated wifey who serves food to her husband and has 'peelings' for him at the most random times, while making a way for odd product placements for Daawat Rice and Kalyan Jewellers!
The other female characters, such as Anasuya Bharadwaj as the scheming rival and Pavani Karanam as Pushpa's niece, play cardboard characters who solely exist to hype up Pushpa's bravado.
The worst of them remains Sreeleela who makes an appearance in the film's much hyped Kissik song, with genius lyrics that goes: 'Thappad maarungi saala thappad maarungi, thapa thapa thappad maarungi' and then continuing to whatever that 'Kiss, kiss, kissik ka' means. I am sure even the hardcore Telugu fans would cringe at this top-tier non-sense.
Overall, Pushpa: The Rule remains a resounding celebration of everything fans love about their favorite superstar.
The hastily announced next sequel confirms that many more of this will be flung our way.
Why would the makers stop milking the fan bases, anyway?
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