Mahavtar Narasimha

(full length animation movie, available in 5 languages on Netflix)

Mahavtar Narasimha, One of the most talked about movie of the year, fourth highest grossing movie, a full length animation movie, which gave run for money, to multi starrer movies with top stars like Coolie, War2, Chhavva and  Kubera and till date standing as the highest grosser of 2025 in terms of rate of return of over Rs. 350 cr on an investment of Rs. 45 crores.

Its Director all the way : Kudos to the debutant director AshwinmKumar to think of a full length animation movie covering two Avatars of Lord Vishnu that of Narsimha and Varaha and introducing the Hindu mythology to the movie goers specially youngsters and children the way they like the most.  

We all are familiar with stories of Hiranksha, Hiranyakashup, Holika and Bhakt Prahlada.    Presenting the known story in an interesting a racy manner, with fabulous set designs, character caricatures and translating them into animation characters and bring out each scene in a gigantic but a natural way is not an easy task and Director and his VFX team have come out fabulous in that.

Coming of age of Indian Animation movies : till now in India animation is restricted to small, amateurish cartoon characters, mostly catering to children and short movies.     In contrast to that Mahavatar Narasimha is a full length 130 minutes animation movie.    It’s a top quality, rich, colourful, attractive and very impactful movie.   All that coming at a Rs. 45 crore budget is unbelievable considering that most of the Rs. 500 crores plus budget movies are earmarking over Rs. 100 crores for VFX and still coming out horrible stuff like War2.   Right from first frame it’s a visual splendour the entry of Varaha avatar and last 20 minutes elaborate action scenes are spell bound.    

What Bahubali has done to PAN India big budget movies and cross over movies, Narasimha will do it to Indian animation movies and more mythological subjects being presented in this format in an attractive and glossy fashion at lesser budgets.   It is always a risk to take established actors for mythological subject, barring NTR top stars in all languages struggle to shake off their image and get into the skin of the mythological roles.   We all have seen what a disaster Adipurush turned out to be though it has bankable star in Prabhas, Saif and Kriti.   The half animation and half normal movie tanked immediately after the release of teaser itself.   There were many scenes where audience will be awestruck at the way the scenes was conceived, designed and executed to perfection.

Decent music :  Besides VFX and direction, the other significant contribution has come from music director Sam SC, back ground score is very good, couple of songs and devotional recitation is pleasing.   But being mythological movie I would have expected more recitation and few more devotional songs and bhajans from Prahlada character.    Movie goers, specially Telugu and Tamil from my generation have memories of AVM’s Bhakt Prahlada (starring legendary SVR, Anjali and Baby Roja Ramani) and its haunting melodies.

Trend setter: Good or bad, the movie producers are known to follow the trends, more of course the later.   But I have no doubt that the stupendous success of Mahavatar Narasimha  will set a trend for other to follow and come out with more and more mythological themes so that our children and youngster can stay in touch with our mythology.    The producers (who made Kantara – the super successful Kannada movie), have already announced other Avatars of Lord Vishnu viz., Parasuram, Krishna, Ram and Kalki in that order.  

It’s a movie not to be missed by any class of movie goers of any age.   Strongly recommended for elders to show to their children so that they develop some interest in Hindu mythology and the great learnings from it.

S. Prabhakar

20.9.2025

 

 

REVIEW OF THE BANGAL FILES – 

STARK AND HARD ON THE FACE STUFF

After facing lot of uncertainty and hostility and pre-release criticism and allegations of being propaganda film and allegations of an attempt to divide the country on communal lines, Bengal files has ultimately released in theatres and I rushed to watch it before it is being banned and pulled out of theatres by coercive measures

Whether it is Tashkent Files, Kashmir Files, Kerala Files or Bengal Files in India or many Hollywood movies made from 60s to 90s on the barbaric acts and genocide by Hitler, Idi Aman and many more dictators, there should be freedom to show the truth.   Covering them up, for whatever reasons, for so many years, and being in self denial mode did not serve any purpose and the gen-next youth have a right to know the historical facts how so ever gory they may be.   Burying them deep and letting the next generations not know it, in itself is a great disservice which has been done for decades.

Coming to elite media, socialites, film personalities like half expression John Abraham that such movies are dangerous and whip up passions and will divide the country on communal lines, I feel that they have their own reasons and compulsions to say so due to their political leanings, but average movie goer like me doesn’t have any.

One may disagree with the sources of research done by writer director Vivek Agnihotri, some cinematic liberties that he might have taken, have serious reservation on the most graphic and gory manner of depicting bloodshed and extreme violence unleashed on the innocent who were hacked to death, beheaded, women were raped and hung with hooks by their breasts, people were burnt live, one sardar hands tied from both side by ropes and pulled by motor cycles on either side to tear him into two parts and dragged on the roads in the market etc., but no one can deny the carnage that took place in Bengal at that time on the Direct Action Day on 16^th August, 1946 and the Noakhali riots.   

When I saw Kashmir Files, I thought Agnihotri has just touched the subject and did not go in to depth of the incidents or issues, but in Bengal Files its `no holds barred’.   He deals with the subject in great details and allowed the subject to sink and shake the audience.   Audience can feel the pain and anguish for what the victims had gone through and cannot help the feeling of stomach churning, reeling and vomiting sensation.    I experienced this earlier while watching Schindler's List.

Coming to the movie, I always feel that for a movie to be complete and successful, apart the story, screenplay, direction casting is very important.     As far as casting of Bengal Files is concerned Agnihotri was bang on.    Kudos to him and his casting director for picking up best actor for each of the over dozen important characters of the movie.   In the recent past I haven’t seen such a perfect casting where over 12 actors gave excellent to brilliant performances.  

 

 

The actors who put up brilliant performance in the same order are

 

• Saswata Chatterjee as Sardar Husseini, MLA.    – a highly talented Bengali actor who showed glimpses of his brilliance in Hindi movie Kahani as menacing contractor killer.   In this movie also he had a small 4-5 scenes role but two scenes where he encounters the special CBI officer, he was so cool, composed, polished but menacing.   I wonder why it took so much time after Kahani where too he was very impressive, to get another look at by Bollywood.   He deserves more and meaty roles in Hindi and other language movies.
• Darshan Kumar as Shiva Aloke Pandit, the special CBI Officer – Handled the pivotal central character very well showing his anguish and helplessness, especially when he goes to arrest the MLA and gets slapped and forced to apologise before MLA son and wife.
• Pallavi Joshi as Maa Bharati / aged Bharti Banerjee – extremely complex role of a dementia patient and the only surviving member of the dreadful incident.    This is a role of lifetime for any one and she gave performance of her life time.  
• Namashi Chakraborthy as Gulam Hussaini – this character does most of the killings by hacking, he was menacing and villainy oozing out his face, eyes and body language.   He exhibited not only ruthlessness but projected each killing as a souvenir
• Simrat Kaur as young Bharati Banerjee – she is beautiful, expressive and gone though all shades of happiness, sad, anguish and helplessness in equal measure.   Though a Kaur, she looked like a Bengali girl.
• Eklavya Sood as Amarjeet Arora – He looked like real Sardar and brilliant in his body language and rebellion expressions.  He is comfortable in soft romantic expressions and fiery aggression.
• Sourav Das as Gopal Patha – though had a lesser screen time, his acting was explosive and impactful
• Dibyendu Bhattacharya as  Roy Chowdhary – matured and dignified role
• Mithun Chakraborty as Madman Chatur – a 3-time national award winner, after working in over 50 good for nothing movies, he picks up one good role and exhibits the better actor in him.   This movie is one of such movies with an unrecognisable make up and body language.
• Anupam Kher as Mahatma Gandhi – hardly had few scenes and expressed the self-imposed helplessness of Gandhi very well and got hooting in the theatre – a clear disapproval of Gandhi’s inapt handling of such a serious situation when thousands of Hindus were killed. 
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• At 3 hours and 20 minutes the movie is very lengthy if it is trimmed by atleast 30 minutes it would have become crisp and racier.    Both current day situations and flash back to 1946 are dragged a bit.    May be writer director Agnihotri might have been tempted too much by his research that he over filmed and stretched the movie .  

Overall it is most hard-hitting movie by Agnihotri, despite whatever the criticism and accusations, he did a very good job and we should appreciate him for bringing to the light the unfortunate carnage of the Noakhali riots which were kept under wraps by the Government, media and movie makers.  We need more such brave Director and more such movies.

If you are not pseudo secular, elite socialite or partisan, and have the stomach to withstand stomach churning and extremely violent scenes even on women and children, then you must catch up the movie.

I give 4 out of 5 for brilliant acting by so many actors and excellent direction and the guts of Vivek Agnihotri

 

S. Prabhakar

8.9.2025

 

Kanappa – the worst Telugu mythological movie ever made  

At last I watched Kannapa on OTT, to see how badly it is made after my first unsuccessful attempt to watch it in theatre on 4^th day in Vizag when the show was cancelled as atleast 10 tickets were not sold.   Honestly it took huge efforts to complete it in 3-4 instalments.

Though Mohan Babu has pumped in huge budget of over Rs. 200 crores on non-bankable Son Vishnu’s movie and packed it with top stars from various industries like Akshay Kumar, Sarat Kumar, Mohan Lal and our own Prabhas as a safety net.   Right from the start of the movie, Manchu family has given it huge publicity in social media and the trolling batch was equally active.   Ever since the stupendous success of Bahubali and RRR, every Telugu producer and every director feels that big budget and over the top vfx are the only factors which makes a movie a sure shot success.    But what they forget is that every movie needs to have a good story, screen play and capable director to come out with an engaging and racy narration.    Kannappa lacked all of these and added to that pathetic vfx which is as bad like pre vfx period 1980s quality.   So much father son publicity was given about shooting New Zealand and what we had is a huge green open land which you can find anywhere in Shimla (specially Dalhousie) and Dharmashala.  

The challenge while making any mythological or historical movies like Kannapa is the basic story from the available sources is very thin, the develop that into a full fledged movie some interesting and acceptable side story has to be developed, and have all ingredients of romance, comedy and ofcourse action.   There is  not much material about Kanappa,   Not seen Kannada Rajkumar’s Kalahasti mahatyam, but Krisham Raju made a very interesting movie `Bhakta Kannapa’ sticking mainly on Kannappa theme and an excellent comedy track by Rao Gopal Rao and Mada and super hit songs that brought lot of name, fame and money for Krishnam Raju.  

But in Kannapa for major portion of 3 hour long movie, it was more of irrelevant tribal gang wars and boring and very modern looking and cheap romantic track.  Akshay is looking like a cartoon character as Lord Shiv, Mohan Lal hardly had one scene, Mohan Babu is not very effective, the only saving grace is Prabhas, but he comes too late after almost 2 hours, seasoned senior actor Sarat Kumar too is good.   The movie goers like me who have seen NTR and Character Actor Balayya as Lord Shiv cannot digest AK as Shiv.   The actual Kanappa story starts after 2 and ½ hours run time and that too was handled very badly.    The Mohan Babu may feel that it is the best performance of Vishnu till now, but even his best efforts are pedestal.   The image of Mohan Babu as anti-brahmin and lampooning them in every second film, has not help their cause when they wanted to make a movie on mythological subject.  

Director Mukesh Kumar Singh, who shot into popularity with some popular TV serials, is not mature enough to handle such subject with such budget.    Apart from the thin story line and lose screenplay, his handling of VFX and action scenes is really inadept.   The action scenes over the bridge (which resembles the action scene of Magadheera) and the giant spider scenes are so poorly executed that what was created by Vithalacharya in 1960s in NTR movies like Jagadekaveeruni Kadha, Gulebakavali Kadha etc, looked far better and executed.    Music – both songs and BGM is below average.

Rather than Vishnu, the movie should have been made with Prabhas, with good script focusing more on Kanappa, Kalahasti and related stories with more talented director handling the project.   Then it could have had good chance of hitting bull’s eye.  

The bombing of Kanappa could be the last straw on Mohan babu back.   Neither his films nor his children’s films are running at the box office and he has blown large portion of what he has earned over the last 40 years.   He should think of making a very late come back in villain roles like Jagapati Babu, which are now going to Bollywood under employed stars like Sanjay Dutt and Bobby Doel.  Mohan babu is far superior actor than them.   

S. Prabhakar