Radhe Shyam
Director: Radha Krishna Kumar
Cast: Prabhas, Pooja Hegde
In one of the first few scenes, we see a character based on Indira Gandhi showing her hand to palmist Vikramaditya (Prabhas) as he predicts that she is going to declare emergency in the near future. There is another scene where we see a photograph of singer-songwriter John Lennon taking Prabhas’ autograph as he is a world famous palmist often compared to French astrologer Nostradamus.
A romantic drama which features Pooja Hegde as the heroine, Radhe Shyam is so ambitious in its scale that it almost fools you into believing it’s a great film. Unfortunately, it doesn’t even come close to being great and is just a yawnfest. The film ends up as one of those big budget attempts that’s highly ambitious and silly at the same time. While Prabhas tries to hold it together in whatever way possible, the film is mostly underwhelming if not for the grandeur and couple of some amazing visuals.
Director Radha Krishna Kumar, along with the makers, ensured the trailers made it seem like the film is a rom-com, with some tragedy. It takes only 15 minutes into the film to burst that bubble. The tag line reads: Witness the biggest war between love and destiny. I was seriously left looking to witness something in it’s almost two-and-a-half hour run time.
Set in 1976, the story is about palmist Vikramaditya who believes that astrology is a science that is 100% correct. On the other hand, his guru Paramahamsa (Sathyaraj) has a theory that astrology can predict up to 99 percent, not 100 percent. The remaining one percent of people write their fate and create history, says Paramahamsa, with which Vikramaditya differs.
Also, he doesn’t have a love line and so he doesn’t believe in relationships. He only believes in ‘flirtationship’. But he meets Prerana (Pooja Hegde) and falls for her instantly. She is a doctor working in a general hospital in Rome and is suffering from a life-threatening disease. When Vikramaditya sees her palm, he predicts that she will live for 100 years. But he decides to leave her and move far away from her. The rest of the story takes you through the journey of these two lovers and how destiny and karma play a part.
The film lacks two essentials. First, there is no visible chemistry between Prabhas and Pooja. Their journey of falling in love is often cut rather abruptly to add some comic scenes which don’t evoke any kind of laughter. Second, the love story isn’t palpable enough. It’s no wonder then that the convoluted mess, which goes on for over two hours, fails to tug at one’s heart. There are many pointless scenes and characters which don’t make any sense.
Talking about the positives, the film is shot beautifully and in a grand scale through some amazing locations of Europe. The climax sequence of the ship has been executed really well for which the VFX team surely derivers a round of applause. But despite all of it, the film sinks completely like the ship.
I wish director Radha Krishna Kumar should have shown his hand to some palmist before making the film who probably would have predicted the future of the film and would have advised the producers against investing Rs 300 crore into making this bore. For now, the future of the film is full of grim.
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