Pesum Padam

What happens when the hero is introduced?
He is flying (and not in a plane)
Things around him are flying (can range from flowers or vegetables to bikes and cars)
He is quietly spending time with his friends

What happens when the heroine is introduced?
She is dancing or at least getting wet in the rain
She is smiling for no apparent reason for doing some mundane task (like catching an auto, or choosing a book or drawing a kolam)
She is lost and/or stranded and needs help

What happens when boy meets girl ?
The world around them stops and they start walking towards each other in slow motion
They bump or collide into each other, even if they don’t their clothes or bags or books do.
The movie comes to an end.

What happens when the luscious heroine jumps up and down in front of the villain?
He falls in love with her and wants her by hook or crook
He misbehaves with her and the hero comes to her rescue
He ignores her and minds his own business

What happens when the villain realizes that the girl loves the hero?
He tries to kill the hero
He tries to kill her because no one else can have what he cannot have.
He magnanimously wishes her good luck and lets her go

What happens when the hero has to choose between his love and duty?
He chooses duty and sings a sad song
He makes sure the heroine follows him around like a puppy before he finally explains to her the reason for rejection
He changes his mind when the heroine threatens suicide or is dying

What happens when the heroine is dying?
She tells the hero that she wants to die on his lap
She tells him that they will get united in their next life
She dies with her hand outstretched and her make-up intact

If you scored more than 12 points, you are fully qualified to watch any ‘regular’ movie in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi, irrespective of if you know or understand the language. If you have a negative score, either you are not from India and/or for some weird reason, you have not seen Indian movies !

It was this qualification that made me watch and completely understand Magadheera a few days ago (and the fact that there are a lot of Hindi and Sanskrit words in Telugu). Don’t get me wrong, I loved the movie and would gladly watch it again. It is a story of 2 lovers who die with their desires unfulfilled, are reborn after 400 years to be united. It has all the predictable elements but the screenplay deserves applause. So does Ramcharan who does complete justice to his role. The story that happens 400 years ago is picturized grandiloquently (and you should ignore the fact that a Rajasthani royal family speaks sundara telungu) and the horse riding/chasing as well as the suyamvar are simply brilliant...just brilliant !

I usually cringe (or atleast pretend to cringe :D) for any knight-on-a-white-horse type scene but I have to unashamedly admit that I rewinded the scene, where hero chases the heroine (who is traveling in a PTC bus) on a horse to tell her he is crazy about her and watched it again....was just too cool !! It was also refreshing to see the hero himself perform many of the stunts. Seeing him ride the horse was so much more convincing than a long shot with some poor stunt guy.

The editor would have done better by completely removing the scenes with Brahmanandam that are not even remotely funny and by sparing us all the trouble of watching Kim Sharma awkwardly dance. The director could have also avoided the very cliched and corny father-son (Chiranjeevi-Ramcharan) song and dance but I guess that was necessary to appease the front benchers even though it would have made the movie at least 30 minutes shorter and crisper......oh..well...these are the times you bless the fast forward option.

All in all, a good choice for a friday-night at home with some take-out :)

PS: I request you to pray (with me) to the dear Lord to not have Vijay star in the tamil version if they ever decide to remake this movie!

Gold fish translator

Suyamvar - practice used by the royal families where the princess chooses the groom based on some sort of competition

PPS: I am sorry if you get a HTML error, the javascript worked when I tried it in a normal html file but the blogger template keeps messing it up.