{"id":9848,"date":"2023-03-17T11:56:20","date_gmt":"2023-03-17T15:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9848"},"modified":"2023-03-17T11:56:20","modified_gmt":"2023-03-17T15:56:20","slug":"rrr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/17\/rrr\/","title":{"rendered":"RRR."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

RRR<\/em> was a worldwide sensation last year, the biggest crossover in Tollywood history and now the third-highest grossing film to ever come from India. If you haven\u2019t seen it, you probably know the Oscar-winning song \u201cNaatu Naatu\u201d from its viral dance sequence, which is certainly the highlight of the film. It\u2019s a whole lot of movie, running three hours and bouncing across genres, including action, bromance, musical, and more, much of which doesn\u2019t work, but at its heart it\u2019s a revisionist revenge fantasy (like Django Unchained<\/em> or Inglourious Basterds<\/em>) that tries to have fun, and that\u2019s when it works the best. (It\u2019s streaming on Netflix.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The core plot of RRR<\/em> is pretty simple \u2013 an English colonial governor visits a Gondi village with his wife, and she takes a shine to a girl of about eight or nine, so she and her husband kidnap the kid, paying a few coins to the mother as compensation. Eventually, we meet Bheem (Tarak, also credited as NT Rama Rao Jr.), the tribe\u2019s guardian, who swears to get the girl back, posing as a Muslim man in Delhi to try to infiltrate the governor\u2019s house. Meanwhile, Raju (Ram Charan) is a soldier in the Raj\u2019s employ who shows incredible courage and fighting skills, even against his own people, and is tasked with finding Bheem before he can pose a danger to the governor. Raju and Bheem meet without knowing the other\u2019s identity and become best friends, but we know this can\u2019t last and the two find themselves in conflict multiple times during the film before coming together near the conclusion. Everything else is ornamentation \u2013 this is a bromance driven by the kidnapping and rescue plot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RRR<\/em> is extremely entertaining, especially given its length (although it could have been a half hour shorter, if not more), but you have to accept it on its own terms. The action sequences are hilariously over the top, and these two men should be dead fifty times over by the time it ends \u2013 it\u2019s like a Marvel movie in that way. Raju is impaled on a tree branch at one point, both men are stabbed more than once, both are bludgeoned, Bheem is severely flogged, and both go flying through the air high enough to break a few ribs at the last on impact. This is just how RRR<\/em> rolls, and I laughed along with the absurdity of it. There\u2019s even a bit of the horror-movie gambit where you are invited to enjoy a good kill here and there, usually when the victim is a colonial soldier or authority figure who\u2019s been openly racist earlier in the film, and I have to admit a couple of those even worked for me. (When Edward finally gets what\u2019s coming to him, it\u2019s extremely well done \u2013 the reveal there is quite clever.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That suspension of disbelief starts to crumble outside of the action sequences. I have no issue with the film\u2019s depiction of almost every English person (save one) as a moronic asshole, given the Crown\u2019s racist and repressive policies towards people who had existed without the white man\u2019s help for millennia, but it does function as a plot convenience too often \u2013 it\u2019s less fun to see your heroes outwit a group of simpering idiots than to see them defeat more worthy foes. There are smaller details that also seem unnecessary, such as when one of the heroes is held in solitary confinement and nearly starved, but somehow manages to exercise and become more muscular in the process. I understand the desire to turn these two into supermen, but this feels like an LCD Soundsystem album, where every song with a good hook goes on twice as long as it needs to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s an extended flashback in the middle of the film that explains Raju\u2019s character and arc at great length, a conceit that Amsterdam<\/em> used and that tanked that film\u2019s story. It\u2019s more effective here, and far more necessary, but again goes on way too long, and the way the story jumps to the past, back to the present, and then a good while later returns to that flashback to finish the story is sloppy. That could have been much tighter while still providing the essential back story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two lead actors are pretty great, though \u2013 both can command the screen when they\u2019re on it, both exude charisma, and the way they work together on screen whether their characters are friends are foes is the movie\u2019s strongest asset. I\u2019d watch a whole series of movies where these two solve crimes or take out petty English tyrants, especially with a well-choreographed dance number or two. Both men are already stars in India, and I can see why. There isn\u2019t much room for anyone else, although it\u2019s worth mentioning that the governor\u2019s wife is played by Irish actress Alison Doody, who played the villainous Elsa Schneider in the third Indiana Jones <\/em>film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RRR<\/em> won one Oscar this past week for \u201cNaatu Naatu,\u201d although the performance during the awards ceremony didn\u2019t include any actual South Asian dancers<\/a>, which seems like an unforced error for the Academy. India submitted another movie for the Best International Feature Film honor, The Last Film Show<\/em>, a movie about how great the movies are, which meant RRR<\/em> was ineligible for that award. I know many critics and fans felt that RRR<\/em> deserved a Best Picture nomination, but I can\u2019t get over that line. This is a fun movie, and an entertaining one, but I don\u2019t think it passes that higher level of scrutiny \u2013 it\u2019s sprawling and disorganized, often ridiculous, and engages in a lot of trickery to make the plot work. I still ranked it higher on my own list than than All Quiet on the Western Front<\/a><\/em>, Elvis<\/a><\/em>, or Triangle of Sadness<\/a><\/em>, but I can name ten other films I would have put in the BP category over this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RRR was a worldwide sensation last year, the biggest crossover in Tollywood history and now the third-highest grossing film to ever come from India. If you haven\u2019t seen it, you probably know the Oscar-winning song \u201cNaatu Naatu\u201d from its viral dance sequence, which is certainly the highlight of the film. It\u2019s a whole lot of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1290,1213,215,1342],"class_list":["post-9848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2022-movies","tag-indian-films","tag-movies","tag-tollywood","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9848"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9849,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9848\/revisions\/9849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}