Liger Review: Attack.. on All of the Senses
Rating: 1.5/5
After 2 years, Vijay Devarakonda has finally hit the screens with Liger. Touted to be an action-packed movie with standard Puri flavor, the cinema hit the screens today amidst massive hype. Let’s see how it is.
Plot:
Liger (Vijay Devarakonda) and Balarani (Ramya Krishnan) come to Mumbai from Karimnagar for Liger to make it big in the MMA league, as his dad was once a huge fighter. They enlist the help of a coach (Ronit Roy) and go on. Admist all of this, Tanya (Ananya Pandey) comes in and makes Liger fall in love with her. What happens next between them and Liger’s MMA journey forms the rest of the story.
Performances:
Vijay Devarakonda’s screen presence is really good. Adapting the body of a boxer, and then bringing his body language to resemble that fits the bill and makes the first half ride somewhat on his shoulders. Performance-wise, he tries to do well too and succeeds in some of the parts. Where it goes mostly downhill is the stammer. It doesn’t fit the characterization firstly, a blunder from Puri’s end (lot on the writing later on), and then it ends up being overdone by the star again and again. Matched with the performance going down in the second half, it turns into a very mixed outing. A shame because with the hard work and the initial signs, it could have been a game changer. Ananya Pandey is flat out annoying; her role is written so poorly, ruining the good scenes and making the bad scenes even worse, and her acting is very caricaturish to the point where it brings ire to the viewer to just see her on the screen. Ramya Krishnan overacts for the most part; some good emotions but there’s a lot of yelling and a lot of over-emphasis that doesn’t go well. Ali is wasted, Vish hams his way through, Getup Srinu brings some laughs in bits and pieces. Mike Tyson is a terrible cast in a laughable role that has the cringest moments throughout. There was no need and I hope many Western audiences don’t watch the movie, because he will be subject to massive trolls.
Writing/Direction:
Where do I start with what the movie messes up? What doesn’t the movie mess up is maybe the correct question here as Puri Jagannadh absolutely brutally destroys everything across the board if it relates to the writing. The basic writing and plot of the movie is thin and without heft. The basic story of a Slumdog Millionaire template with the ever-seen boxing has been seen so many times. His plot is predictable and pathetically old and routine. It reeks of commercial stamps that arent needed to the story along with no sense of direction or structure. For freshness, what he does is mixes whatever he gets in a slurry of incoherency. He seems to have written the story in whatever high he was in at the time because nothing is written with basic coherency, especially in the second half. Scenes just come at the blink of an eye, narrations occur, songs come in the middle of nowhere, situations disappear and appear randomly, the events are conveniently brought together without any line of reasoning between them. The writing is just abysmal throughout. A testament ti this is the pathetic heroine track. It doesn’t have any significance to the story, just comes and annoys the viewer further without a sense of substance. Even the scenes that are initially written good are ruined with the heroine’s random interjections (SHES ON A FACETIME CALL IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS MANS FIGHT?? WHY IS SHE GIVING SIDE COMMENTARY IN HIS DOJO? If it sounds random its even more random in implementation.) What’s even worse is the hero’s characterization writing, because it starts off good; written with classic Puri dialogues and a devil-me-care Devarakonda, it slides into blasphemy because of the stammer element. What was the point of this? Why did he have to stammer? And in the second half, the characterization written goes off the charts into a pool of nastiness. There’s just no other way to out it. Threads are open, and characters are written as badly as they need to. The writing is so abysmal it doesn’t have any way to be redeemed. Not one angle works and invests the audience.
Puri’s screenplay isn’t as bad as the writing, but that doesn’t say anything; it’s because while he somewhat keeps the movie flowing in the first 30 minutes, he soon crashlands the movie’s screenplay into no man’s land and leaves it as such a horrendously written screenplay as well. As said earlier, the second half is the major culprit of this; scenes go and come without any structure or sense of support and are written in so horrendously that there is never a flow coming in, Characters aren’t developed properly from the first frame and just come floating in, but what keeps the movie somewhat afloat is the screenplay just moving the cinema along at a high speed with a lot of fights. The major problem that remains here is the random insertion of tracks that don’t have any relevance to the plot; the heroine track comes in as a sense of forwarding but only bogs down the plot, with the screenplay just erratically bouncing all over the place. It becomes very convenient and over-the-top soon; as a result of that, each event doesn’t lead to the next at all and rather just circulates around the same poor writing that was mentioned. Not one thread is developed at all, and every scene is just floating in air. The only thing that’s somewhat developed is the heroine track, and that too is left so much without a line of reasoning and just interjects. Fighting scenes are suddenly cut by the heroine track and then a random song, and then followed by another random fighting scene. Are you kidding me? Wheres the flow of events to invest the audience? A fighting scene then falls into the erratic writing and further goes into a headache inducer from complete mediocrity. The proceedings are messy and circulate around the wrong thing; rather than showing us the characterization of the hero and moulding the screenplay to match that, it concentrates on various angles that don’t make sense and are further very convenient. The major thing in a commercial movie is to keep the flow of events and screenplay connected for us to connect with the protagonist, but here its just bits and pieces that half work in a pile of nothing. The direction is even more atrocious from Puri Jagannadh. His narration is like someone narrating a children’s book; there isn’t an ounce of buildup nor potential for anything to connect with the hero. Above all, its that consistent sense of overaction in the name of rusticness that dilutes the interest severely. Everyone overacts and all of the scenes have a sense of loudness to them that doesn’t work with the plot. The tone is all over the place, moving to threads and tracks faster than the blink of the eye. All of the scenes are shot amateurly to a point where the fight scenes don’t work despite cool choreo, and none of the sentiment scenes properly pan across with odd camera angles and an air of overaction. It seems, especially in the second half, that Puri gave up with the movie, lazily directing scenes and leaving them without any backing; after a point, it seems like he’s urging the audience to give up too.
The first half of the movie is below average; its the better half of the two, starting off decent, but soon it flies into a whirlpool of mediocrity with the romantic track that doesn’t have a way out. The movie begins with the intro of Vijay Devarakonda and his characterization; while the writing’s fallacies are seen here itself, with just a random placement without the proper explanation, the screenplay to the action keeps the movie going in a decent introductory fight that is mainly highlighted by Devarakonda’s acrobatic fights. The movie then goes to establish the plot slowly, and does it decently with the screenplay moving. This all goes down south when Ananya Pandey enters with a intro song that itself is a speedbreaker and a half, crashing the movies flow and adding overaction from her first frame. The heroine track is very badly written, even for a Puri movie; while Pandey herself is very over the top and unbearable, the role itself has the most cringe dialogues and scenes, and her interactions with Vijay Devarakonda are headache inducing. Even a good fight scene is ruined by her interjections time and again. By this time, the heroine track becomes the main focus, and here starts the screenplay bogging down the movie with the writing too; the song Aafat coming in as a major and unneded speedbreaker, the stammer becoming more unbearable by the minute and draining the movie of any potential whistle-worthy dialogues. All of the scenes become concentrated around the heroine track; not the best move when the heroine track is so annoying with what she brings. The scenes themselves are too unbearable as well, with each scene just testing the audience’s patience. The boxing track is completely sidelined too here, and it shows with convenient writing and poor continuity (Getup Srinu and the track comes here, with the sudden change of tone). The train fight is caricaturish and laughable at best; Amidst all of this, Akdi Pakdi comes in randomly but serves as a relief because of Devarakonda’s dance moves and the beat. The movie moves in the same format before leading to a passable at best pre-interval and interval sequence due to Devarakonda, but even this doesn’t work out fully and leaves a lot on the second half.
The second half is the epitome of bad cinema in my opinion; nothing works, the writing and screenplay are random and pathetic, and the flow that a movie should bring isn’t there with an ounce. Threads just randomly come and go, indicated by the climax and the way the arcs and characterizations pan out. The movie begins with more romantic scenes that become laughable, before moving to the boxing montages. These are quick, undeveloped without a sense of connect, and just are conveniently written. There are so many logical disconnects, especially Devarakonda’s hairstyle and characterization, but even without that the flow of the movie itself goes up in the air with random boxing scenes that haven’t even been introduced coming in. Admist all of this, Puri keeps the heroine track going and interjecting to the most annoying extent one can keep it. The proceedings keep moving without any screenplay structure and well-written scenes, but on top of that this time they keep forcing angles and songs, such as the Waat Laga Denge and Attack song and a patriotic angle that comes from- you guessed it- the middle of nowhere. Puri didn’t know where or what to write, so he ended up writing a mess of events that didn’t hold up with any of the writing. At this point, he tries to write some superficial callbacks that don’t work, but rather even further the mess. Chunky Pandey is introduced to try and further the movie, but with more half-baked characters and less emphasis on the threads that connect the story, it doesn’t do anything. The movie moves along in the most uninteresting manner to the pre-climax and climax, which really tops the mess off with more mess. The pre-climax fight is the most unnecessary fight I have seen, one that stands for Puri over-the-top style mixed with Dharma Productions glossing over. There’s people who don’t have any relation to the story just coming in and fighting, eventually leading to the climax-by far the WORST part of the movie with a laughable Mike Tyson. Cringy dialogues, bad writing as it avoids the main track with a standoff of some sorts, comedic scenes and surroundings, and the disparity between Telugu and English that just topped off how bad the movie is, ending on the most abrupt and worst note. Nobody told Puri that a movie needed to have a flow of events, because he threw together a highlight reel and called it a day with no support or sense of writing.
Technicalities:
The songs are absolute speedbreakers that don’t have any relevance to the plot nor do they sound good barring Akdi Pakdi; either they’re completely bad or montages that don’t let the audience simmer in the scenes. The background score is unmemorable, somewhat of a win considering its by Sunil Kashyap who could have contributed to the mess tenfold. The Liger BGM does get very annoying though. Cinematography and art direction is a rare positive, the visuals look good and somewhat help especially when the writing isn’t that bad initially. The editing is very bad, especially in the later half where random cuts proceed to further the story. Dialogues are probably the worst Puri dialogues I’ve heard, with Telugu and English cringe as a bonus in abysmal situations. Production values are good, no matter what the horrible writing Karan Johar mounted it well on a good stand.
Overall Verdict/TLDR:
I knew it was going to bad, and I still went, and somehow Liger beat my expectations on how bad it was. Liger is a horribly failed commercial movie without an ounce of good writing or something to pertain to the mind in the most minimal sense. It’s high time Puri go back to the drawing board and find his old form, what made him successful. Positives are Devarakonda screen presence, Akdi Pakdi song, some fights in the first half, and production values and cinematography. On the flipside, abysmal writing, messy and superficial screenplay, annoying direction and wayward narration, Ananya Pandey and the heroine track, speedbreakers songs, the stammer element, horrible second half, Mike Tyson and the laughable climax, cringe dialogues, and wayward editing Mar the movie horribly. A real liger may be a crossbreed of a lion and a tiger, but the movie Liger is a crossbreed of pathetic and ridiculous. Go if you want to waste money.
Commercial Viability: The advance bookings are wonderful and show Vijay Devarakonda’s star power. But the climax and the lack of structure will not appeal to many- even fans of senseless mass movies. With the direction missing the mark, at the B and C centers the movie will be out rightly rejected. USA will not sustain, as won’t Telugu states. Hindi MIGHT- MIGHT- do well but I highly doubt because of the Boycott trend. Talk is also very negative as it should be. Overall, its looking like a loss venture.
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