Prabhas Is Reduced To Sub-Par In Radhe Shyam Despite His Massive Screen Presence
Radhe Shyam Review: Prabhas and Pooja Hegde are stuck with a script that doesn't give them much leeway. The outcome is disastrous.
Prabhas, Pooja Hegde, and Sachin Khedekar star in the film.
Radha Krishna Kumar is the director.
Two out of five stars (out of 5)
Radhe Shyam is a godawfully turgid love drama with crushing gusts of bombast and pomposity that sucks the oxygen out of the genre. The film's stated objective of asserting that human beings' fate is determined not by the lines on their palms but by the power of their hands is defeated by prettiness overload and continuous obscurantism.
The screenplay (authored by director Radha Krishna Kumar) gives lead actors Prabhas and Pooja Hegde very little opportunity for manoeuvring. With their hands tied, the couple is obliged to play along. The outcome is disastrous.
Both are unable to rise above the ruins of a film that culminates in a storm and leaves the hero to battle the elements on a sinking ship (in the literal sense and otherwise). They don't succeed in making an emotional connection with the audience, but it's not for lack of trying. How far can performers go with platitudes that are both empty and perplexing?
Radhe Shyam is billed as a big-budget spectacular that will sweep us off our feet. It was concurrently shot in Telugu and Hindi with two unique soundtracks and released across the country. Parts of the movie come close to accomplishing this goal. It is packed with opulent imagery and outstanding visual effects, with substantial chunks of it shot throughout Europe. However, not much of what the picture offers achieves the sensory highs that it seeks.
Radhe Shyam is prettified nonsense that tries to pass itself off as a serious investigation into life and death, destiny and human endeavour, palmistry and science, and love and loss. The undeniably superb work that he and the visual effects team produce is rendered ineffective in the absence of a palpable and adequate context for all the superficial 'beautiful' on show.
Amitabh Bachchan's voiceover on the pyaar-versus-kismat dichotomy sets the tone for the 140-minute film, which simply lacks the weight of the narrator's famous baritone. Of course, Prabhas' screen presence is terrific, but he is relegated to being sub-par because he is trapped in a setting that makes little use of what he brings to the table.
Radhe Shyam's final sequence allows Prabhas to slide into action-hero mode - despite the fact that he isn't fighting a human foe - and this is where he seems far more at ease than at any other moment in the film.
Radhe Shyam's male protagonist is a soothsayer who is referred to as "the Einstein of palmistry" in one of the first scenes and "the Nostradamus of India" in another. If these titles aren't enough to pique your interest, consider that the man in question, Vikramaditya, had the audacity to read Indira Gandhi's palm and predict the start of the Emergency.
He flees the repercussions of the bold prediction and settles in faraway Rome, where he continues to prosper. During his travels through Italy, he meets the lovely and impulsive Prerna (Hegde) aboard a train that appears to be carrying no other passengers and is bound for no specific location on the railway map.
The daring lady is a doctor who works in a Rome hospital under the supervision of her stern uncle (Sachin Khedekar), who is adamant that Vikramaditya is a fake. It goes without saying that the boy-meets-girl moment is not wasted. Vikramaditya falls in love with Prerna, despite his repeated assertions that he is not the "relationship type," but rather the "flirtation-ship type."
It's obvious to see that no matter which ship the guy is on, he and the film aren't going to have a pleasant journey. One chase, which begins when Vikramaditya tells a reluctant businessman (Jagapathi Babu in a cameo appearance) that he has no future in politics, ends with the hero throwing himself under what appears to be a bus but is later referred to as an ambulance.
Vikramaditya awakens in the same hospital where Prerna works. Where else would he go if everything is written on the man's palm, as the movie leads us to believe? He quickly informs the heroine that he will never fall in love, marry, or start a family because it is what fate has planned for him.
The rest of Radhe Shyam is devoted to demonstrating that the hero is incorrect. True, but the film's methods are both brutally predictable and excruciatingly cruel.
Radhe Shyam is a choppy, meandering affair that spends a lot of time establishing Vikramaditya as a master of his art before abruptly backtracking and changing the tone - and confusingly. It takes the threat of death and a terrifying tsunami to cause a change of heart.
The palmist may be skilled at his craft, but life is far too valuable to be left in the hands of his diagnosis, as the film tries to convey to its audience. The heroine's life - and fate - becomes a test bed for that hypothesis.
Radhe Shyam includes a cameo for Riddhi Kumar as a young girl who wishes to establish a name for herself in the sport of archery to strengthen the point. Vikramaditya makes a few other accurate predictions along the road, cementing his reputation as a fortune-teller.
Jayaram plays a hypochondriac who refuses to leave his hospital bed, Krishnam Raju plays the hero's blind continually pontificating guru, Bhagyashree plays the hero's mother, and Kunaal Roy Kapur plays the hero's best friend who fills in for him during his extended absences from home in Radhe Shyam.
Is there any trace of any of them on the film? They're not supposed to, because Radhe Shyam's focus is solidly on the nonsense that passes for sweet nothings between the lovers who wallow in a concoction that dangles between infantilism and fatalism.
Radhe Shyam is an ill-conceived love storey that is difficult to love. If the devil is in the details, he's all over this film, which appears to be out to establish that the border between blockbuster and mediocrity is razor-thin.
