Raja Saheb – another disastrous movie for Prabhas

By

S. Prabhakar

As expected, Prabhas has delivered another box office dud.   Ever since Prabhas signed Raja Saheb to be directed by Maruti, a first for him in directing a top-ranking Telugu Star who has a huge pan-India market, the average Telugu audience wondered what made Prabhas accept the offer, keeping his box office standing and top producers and directors queuing up for their next project.   After spending over 3 years on his first mega-budget movie Magadheera, which became a Telugu industry hit at that time,  SS Rajamouli quickly announced a low-budget comedy ` Maryada Ramanna’ with a lesser-known comedian Sunil, turning him into a full-fledged hero and publicly announced that he was making this low-budget comedy to relax from the pressure of directing a movie like Magadheera.   Even Maryadaramanna became such a big hit that it was remade in Hindi as Son of Sardar by Ajay Devgan.   So the average cinegoer thought Prabhas too had followed his guru Rajamouli and agreed to do a relatively low-budget comedy horror movie to take a departure from the high-budget high-voltage action movies.   But in Prabhas' case, the experiment proved to be a debacle and added another disaster movie to his long list, post Bahubali stupendous success

What went wrong with Raja Saheb: 

Almost everything.   First, a very bad story and screenplay.   Most of the time, it moves directionless and in a confused manner, neither it engages the audience in what is happening nor is there any interest to expect.     There is nothing new; it is supposed to be a comedy horror, but neither is there any comedy nor any horror.  

Acting: 

Being a Prabhas movie, a lot was expected of him.   But my honest opinion over the last two decades about Prabhas is that he is a very average actor, not good in anything, emotional scenes, comedy scenes, a very bad dancer and has a very weak voice and very funny and incoherent dialogue delivery; all these disqualities were in full display in Raja Saheb.   As has been admitted even by top actors, the most difficult thing to do is comedy, and someone like Prabhas can be least expected to justify an out-and-out comedy movie.   He fell flat in `Bujji Gadu – made in Chennai’ and after a long gap in Kalki.  But it appears he has learnt lesson from his mistake and tried again with disastrous results.    His expressions and dialogue delivery in comedy scenes are hopeless, and the Telugu audience, who are used to rip roaring comedies by dozens of comedians and even leading stars like Allu Arjun and Jr. NTR can hardly tolerate what Prabhas dishes out in the name of comedy.    Throughout his career, Prabhas has been known to be very bad at selecting subjects; he should stop going anywhere near comedy.    Another thing he should take care is his dialogue delivery.   In Bahubali, the Hindi version looked better than the original Telugu version because of fantastic dubbing by Sharad Kelkar, which suited his personality more than his own voice.   So either he has to go for Salaar like movie, where in the entire movie he has dialogue for just around 3 minutes or go for dubbing by someone Telugu also.   Prabhas should consider himself lucky that the role of Bahubali fell in his lap and Rajamouli shaped him so well that a PAN India image got created, never imagined by anyone, including Prabhas, which more or less remained intact, though he delivered 4 disastrous movies, including this one.   He should not stretch his luck too far and chose right kind of movies and directors and deliver a couple of solid blockbusters.   The only positive i saw is that after looking bloated and worn out in most of the movies after Bahubali, Prabhas looked bit slim and trim and going back to Bahubali days, if he continues to be disciplined about his food habits and workouts. 

There is nothing to write about any other actors.   There are three heroines without anyone able to make out who is really loving Prabhas and whom he loves.    Sanjay Dutt, as a villain, like in any other Telugu/South Indian movie, has no significant role, and he is no better actor than Prabhas.   At the stage of life, he must be counting the 10-12 crores per movie he gets rather than bothering about his role, who is the hero, who is the director and what his role is.    Once I read that the Patiala king had purchased 3-4 rolls of Royles, brought them to India, and broke them and redesigned to pick up trash from the roads to avenge the insult by the Englishman when he went to purchase one.   These days, every Telugu/South Indian hero of any standing wants a Bollywood star like Sanjay Dutt, Bobby Deol, and Saif as villains, Amitabh, Nana, as character actors, Jahnvi, Deepika, Priyanka and a host of other Bollywood imports as heroines to massage their ego, and it does not serve any purpose.

Direction by Maruti: Maruti is a small-time director making his career step by step in light-hearted comedies, couple of hits he had were with short-term actors.    No doubt Telugu industry boasts of directors like Janjyala, EVV, Vamsi, Relangi Narasinga Rao and the current top director, Anil Ravipudi, who became a star director making comedies only.   All of them started with small actors and gradually started directing top stars also.   But Maruti tried to leapfrog riding on the back of Prabhas and fell flat on his face terribly exposing his ability to handle a big budget movies with a PAN India star like Prabhas.      

Use of Technology: These days, horror movies need quality and high degree vfx effects to succeed.   The bar has to be increased with every movie.    But Raja Saheb does not offer anything new, except in the last 20 minutes or so.

Music: The background score by Taman S, has become predictable, repetitive and ear-splitting.  No song gets registered.

Verdict:  Overall, a forgettable movie, a movie that should not have been made at all, even if it is made, Prabhas should not have accepted it, whatever the reason may be.  

I give 2/10 rating.   Just don’t waste your time even watching on OTT. 

 

S. Prabhakar

15.1.2026