Srikanth Odela’s The Paradise has almost everything going for it — Nani at the centre, a distinctive fictional world, formidable technical talent, scale, music and enormous pre-release buzz. There is brilliance in several parts of this three-hour spectacle. But does it all come together as the extraordinary film it promises to be?
Brace yourself to read longish lines in this review, for that is what this film is about and more.
What happens when you’ve got a unique story, an amazing actor like Nani, known for his penchant to choose good stories and track record to lead your film, a good production to support a grand spectacle, an accomplished technical team of editor Navin Nooli and music director Anirudh kinds, a well-accomplished action choreographer team creating some of the most stylish stunts, songs topping the charts much ahead of its release, an item number that broke the internet internationally, and pre-release euphoria and buzz that took care of the bookings?
You get The Paradise that is brilliant to begin with. The story, set in perhaps the 1980s in what could have been Hyderabad, but not quite the city we know, where Paradise is about Biryani, but also an area in itself. The residents of the area, the Savari tribe (historically famous for their infamous status during British rule), continue to struggle for their citizenship, years after independence — if you find this matches with the theme in Ram Charan’s Peddi — no one seemed to have taken note of that film — so that’s nothing I would worry about; and perhaps that is what Srikanth Odela, the director, thought too, or he didn’t. Because if you speak of clichés and predictability of the script, there are so many more that this one repeated line of story hardly matters.
Paradise is a fictional city but not quite. There is a zamindar and his atrocities, and a grand palace — his name is Shikanji Mallik, and you get senior actor Mohan Babu to elevate the villain role, and Raghav Juyal to play his equally villainous son. Then there is a love interest, Subbu, a runaway actor, who conveniently enters the script and plays her role well. Kayadu Lohar as Subbalakshmi is convincing and her character gets better attention than many others who just decorate the screen and are one of the hundreds of other extras added to glorify the scenes.
The story cleverly brings in relatable elements, places, people and, very importantly, the spirit of the land of revolutions — Telangana. Yet again, no actual references are mentioned, so it’s really an interesting experimentation that had scope for relatability, euphoria for the scale, and empathy for social struggles that begin with hunger and oppression — which is the starting point for any rebellion — and the imaginary canvas offering flexibility for cinematic liberties and brilliance.
The latter part is where The Paradise scores. The cinematography, Nani’s make-up with jadal and all, his nonchalant, broken and angry man performance, not to mention the stunts, the huge sets recreating an alternate universe, the mother sentiment not being reduced to just that; instead, a role that mostly gets created well and given good scope — the film, when viewed in parts, bodes well for the audience.
But there is brilliance that almost always falls short throughout the three-hour-long film. You are hence left high and dry. The scenes look grand but not quite enough, the dialogues begin well but taper off without a perfect landing that would have made them memorable. Nani’s elevations are not quite there. Even though the actor, with his conviction and performance, salvaged the film and literally carried it on his shoulders, it was over ₹90 crore weight that he too failed to carry for much of the film.
A film that banks on Kaloji’s philosophy of how our lives are for our country, and Gaddar’s Poru Telangana cry — and started as an experimentation in creating a dystopian universe that’s imaginary yet relatable — has, in reality, turned out to be a predictable, formulaic mass masala film with all its tropes intact, including an item number dropped intentionally to excite the audience post-interval. Ironically, there are gaps in the formula too.
The Telugu film industry has time and again proved, on more than a few occasions, that so much could go right for a film but as much could be messed up. And team The Paradise messed up.
Yet, watch the film for Nani, and watch it for those bits and parts that will still excite you, surprise you.
The Paradise Review
Rating: 2.5 / 5
