The Raja Saab

Early on in The Raja Saab, a health scare prompts Prabhas to ask comedian Mahesh Achanta to fetch an odd assortment of items, from footwear to cigarettes. When Mahesh asks if he is serious, Prabhas snaps back with: do the needful — call an ambulance. The exchange is meant to be funny, but it lands flat, setting the tone for what follows. Written and directed by Maruthi, The Raja Saab aims to rewind Telugu cinema to a pre-Baahubali Prabhas — when he thrived in light-hearted roles with space for romance and comedy, à la Darling or Mr Perfect. The actor appears willing to embrace this blend of horror, comedy, fantasy and romance. Yet the film collapses into a baffling hotchpotch that squanders a promising premise. At 189 minutes, it becomes an endurance test, where the occasional spark of fun is smothered by a dull, meandering narrative.

Prabhas’s much-anticipated film, The Raja Saab is about a search for a missing grandfather. Over its three-hour runtime, viewers also end up searching for more than a grandfather. They seek plot cohesion, character depth, genuine scares, or consistent entertainment value - must-haves for every film. Like the film’s protagonist wandering through a haunted palace, you may feel a lack of clear direction or a fully satisfying destination. The Raja Saab begins with Raja (Prabhas) living with his grandmother Gangamma, played by Zarina Wahab. Gangamma suffers from Alzheimer’s and remembers only her missing husband Kanakaraju (Sanjay Dutt) and her grandson. She tells Raja to keep looking for his missing grandfather, who often appears in her dreams.

There is nothing remotely majestic about The Raja Saab, a mangled horror fantasy that borders awkwardly on the comedic and is frequently in danger of making a laughing stock of itself. Matters are aggravated manifold by the film’s inordinate length, which only serves to take it further and further away from where it should have ended up. Given the glaring gap between intention and execution, it would be easy to dismiss The Raja Saab - this reviewer watched the Hindi dub, replete with verbiage that reek of obsolescence - as a load of argle-bargle without any attenuating factors.