Prince Review: Ruling Over an Empty Kingdom
-Note: For clarity, this is a Tamil straight movie with a dub in Telugu.
Rating: 2/5
Sivakarthikeyan, who is on a roll with back to back hits in the form of Doctor and Don, has come up with a Telugu-Tamil joint offering in the form of Prince. Directed by Jathi Ratnalu director Anudeep, the movie has hit the screens with limited hype. Let’s check it out.
Plot:
Anbu (Sivakarthikeyan) is a happy-go-lucky professor who has a progressive father Ulaganathan (Satyaraj). But when Anbu falls in love with Jessica (Maria Ryboshapka), everything breaks loose in his village and with his father. What happens next forms the rest of the story.
Performances:
A major disappointment with Prince is the way that the characters have been given literally nothing to work with. With what they have, Sivakarthikeyan and Satyaraj try their best. SK tries to make the slapstick farcical comedy work his best, and succeeds somewhat too, but ultimately the writing gets too bare for him to do anything else but laugh and mouth random puns. His dances are absolutely golden however. Satyaraj severely tries to make the comedy work with an act where the effort can be seen, and also clicks sometimes too. But when the source material is that poor, nothing can be done much from a performance standpoint. Maria Ryboshapka doesn’t have much to do; her character has been designed poorly and represented very appallingly (more on that later). It’s commendable that she spoke Tamil and dubbed for herself, but a bare character once again. Premji is ineffective, Soori makes no impact, and the rest of the characters don’t have anything to make them stand out. It’s not that the actors aren’t talented; SK is one of the most spontaneous people and Satyaraj needs no introduction, but the movie itself just wanes out.
Writing/Direction:
If we look back at a trend of what SK has been choosing for the past year in terms of scripts- Doctor, Don, and Prince- we can see a clear trend of farcical in the moment comedy, almost and sometimes completely spoof like in some of the moments, where the writing invariably depends on the comedy. Anudeep’s writing in Prince follows this exact trend of just letting whatever comes to his mind in the moment being written on paper; whether it be jokes, random puns, comedy tracks, you name it, just something in the name of in the moment comedy. But while Doctor and Don had a plot and some structure to support the comedy, giving a more satisfying base, Prince has no base- moreso, it has no plot. The summary I gave above is 96% of the movie details you need to know from a plot base. Even in Jathi Ratnalu, the comedy follows a basic plot that, while predictable, still has some depth when thinking about the events that happen. Prince’s core plot is predictable, stale, bare, you name it, and it has nothing supporting it. None of the writing contributes anything from a story outlook. There isn’t one thread developed properly, and all of the scenes just flash out without any backing. Comedically, the puns are stale and the jokes are either too over the top or don’t make sense. Put logic aside, no one asked for that in an Anudeep movie, but they should at least have some impact. Callbacks are as good as nothing; the only callbacks are to some spoofs outside that evoke some chuckles at best. I laughed about 10 times in the movie, which considering the infinite jokes they made isn’t good. Without any structure, the writing just meanders haplessly. Additionally, the way foreigners are shown speaking English and reacting is abhorrent without an ounce of authenticity, and this extends to all of the other scenes too. Even in the farcical tone, the writing has no sense of naturally and keeps forcing itself as staged and staged throughout. Somewhere in this mess theres a message, but the farcical tone leaves the message long in the dust. Anudeep’s writing style in this movie was “throw everything at the board, and let’s see what sticks”, with no thread being developed, no strong foundation to build upon in terms of writing structure, and ultimately no funny comedy throughout.
Anudeep’s screenplay is appalling as well; apart from the classic Anudeep tone, the screenplay jumps around everywhere without establishing a certain thread in space or from the beginning, leaving scenes somewhere in the air and introducing new ones. This is paired with the haphazard writing, but ultimately the screenplay has no excuse for being that choppy and without a flow. All of the scenes, irrespective of their writing, need to be followed tightly from the next scene to the next with some contribution to the plot, tone, or even the setup for a movie to be engaging. Prince has nothing. Anudeep based everything off of some random jokes and executed entire scenes off of them, resulting in no actual development of ideas when the time comes. The screenplay is everywhere; sometimes the movie tries to entertain with comedy, sometimes its emotional scenes sprout of of the middle of nowhere, songs are used sporadically when nothing comes, and when all else fails cut the scene and move to the next. Keep layering aside, taking the example of Jathi Ratnalu which had the same type of madcap comedy style, the screenplay kept to something and developed a world, establishing a plot and weaving the comedy around it. Prince is just comedy after comedy after comedy with no end; as a result, the screenplay is choppy and gives the movie a comedy reel feel rather than an engaging cinematic experience. Anudeep’s direction is aimless; with nothing to work with, he relies entirely on his actors who also have nothing to work with. The narration keeps the same farcical tone, which helps initially to keep it in the viewers minds not to take anything seriously, but that also results in a message being lost in translation. Pacing is completely messed up as a result; with such a bare plot, scenes either just completely cut out threads like Anbu’s family dynamics or don’t develop any threads well at all, giving the audience a very all over the place feel. When the writing is that hopeless, at least the direction needs to be somewhat decent to make the jokes seem funny in the moment, but Anudeep lets each scene fly to the middle of nowhere without a structure or purpose even, causing Prince to just wither away.
The first half of the movie starts of well, with the jokes somewhat hitting their stride early on with some comedic moments, but soon falls down a rabbit hole that the movie can unfortunately never hoist itself back up from. There isn’t anything fresh about the way the movie starts; establishment, setup, everything is predictable and stale, but that wasn’t expected. In the world of predictable proceedings that rely on farcical jokes, Anudeep starts off decently with the jokes somewhat hitting their stride. Satyaraj helps with this, and later Sivakarthikeyan as well, as the movie shifts to the school setting which has some funny moments. The screenplay and writing issues start from frame one itself, but the jokes itself aren’t bad initially and excuse some of the issues. From the moment Jessica enters the scene is when the movie slowly starts its slides. Anudeep’s jokes are tolerable for about the first 30 minutes or so; with the bottle gourd thread being a genuinely hilarious comedy bit that works. But soon, it becomes Anudeep just throwing jokes and expecting at least 50% to stick with the audience rather than narrating a story or setting up a world. As a result, the writing goes everywhere with threads flying and evaporating and scenes following suit. The romantic angle is predictable and beaten to death, so it doesn’t evoke any interest. The songs come as speedbreakers here, hurting the scenes from having whatever small amount of flow they could have in the first place. Even so, the movie has some comedic touches that are decent and continues to progress in this state of mixed feelings until Bimbiliki Pilapi; from there, the movie brazenly progresses to the pre interval and interval where the scenes get boring and lose steam to a very underwhelming interval bang, and a lot on the second half.
The second half is disappointing, this time with the jokes not landing at all and rather just withering away to hurt the movie already suffering from terribly bare writing and intensely choppy screenplay. The movie continues with its madcap comedy, but this time the jokes don’t work at all. A song is introduced in one of the most inconvenient ways possible, and then disappears. It becomes a trend of the entire writing in the second half and even the movie; disappearing threads, introducing conflicts and specific angles, and just letting them fly again. It comes to the point where small jokes that should be the center of a one minute punchline are extended out to entire scenes, with the same point repeated again and again. The screenplay and writing just go everywhere and by this point the direction is aimless too. The movie goes and tries to impress with a comedic fight scene, a comedic police station scene, a comedic romantic scene; but none of it makes anyone laugh. Prince continues to stumble along somewhat, toying the line of a message that is just swept under with the farcical tone and somewhat serious scenes that don’t extend any depth because of the lack of continuation. Puns continue to come, punches continue to come, but none of it is funny; as simple as that. Eventually, the movie goes to the climax scene which is actually somewhat passable; Anudeep packs some of his better puns and just like Jathi Ratnalu style, ends it with a repeating word. The ending 10 min is one of the better portions with some of the jokes clicking well with meta spoofs, but that doesn’t disguise how bare the movie is overall and how poor it turns out to be.
Technicalities:
Thaman’s music doesn’t have anything to add to the plot and is even somewhat of a speed breaker despite decent tunes. While Jessica is underwhelming and Who Am I is a cacophony of nonsense, Bimbiliki Pilapi is good but revealed too much of the song before the release. His BGM is not bad, aiding some scenes but mostly being just there. Cinematography is decent, with the entire Pondicherry area captured well but some scenes looking very cheaply with a different aspect ratio. Dialogues are all pun based, which is appreciable to not take it seriously, but only very few of them work. Editing is very haphazard, with scenes just cut without any explanation, but I guess it fits the tone of the writing. Production values were decent with not much of a budget.
Overall Verdict/TLDR:
Look, I liked Jathi Ratnalu and I appreciate Anudeep’s comedy, where you can just put your brain aside and laugh. But there’s two facts to be noted is that a) Prince is in heavy Jathi Ratnalu hangover but doesn’t have any of the natural and somewhat structured writing, screenplay, or nice direction that Jathi Ratnalu had, and b) all of this could have been excused if the puns itself were funny, which it unfortunately isn’t. So overall, Prince is just a hapless attempt at a comedy with no substance. Positives are some jokes in the first half, last 10 minutes, somewhat farcical tone, and Bimbiliki Pilapi with SK’s dances. Negatives are bare and stale writing, aimless direction, choppy screenplay, unfunny comedy and poor central puns, haphazard editing, speed breaker songs, unfinished threads everywhere, repetitive dialogues, and no strong or gripping characterizations. When a director whose last movie was a sense of a cult movie and an actor who has started a literal 2.0 phase unite for Diwali, you expect fireworks. And this Diwali, the Prince team tries but ultimately ends up lighting the fire to their own movie instead.
Opinion of Commercial Viability: The hype is low, but SK’s strength is family audiences that usually come in large numbers over time. Advance bookings are decent but nowhere near Diwali festival hype. With heavy competition and mixed talk, it will be interesting to see how the movie finishes in terms of the box office; in my opinion, it won’t be as successful as Doctor or Don, but won’t completely crash due to the low budget and festival season, settling at a below average-average.
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