garg4269

This film is movie-making at its finest (in this genre at least).

Great characters, great story, direction, acting, dialogues, intrigues, mind-blowing twists, great action and gore (not for the faint-hearted), emotions, comedy.. this film has got it all.

It's been a few years since I've rated a film 10/10 and this film thoroughly deserved it, because I could not find a single serious flaw in it. I just wish that I had watched it on a big screen to contribute to its box office collection, but no matter, I'll spread the word now.

Let's get started. The movie starts out with a mundane yet intriguing premise, where our protagonist, Maharaja (played by Vijay Setupathi), keeps visiting a police station for reporting the theft of an item of seemingly little value, and even offers the police money for retrieving it. He is constantly abused, heckled, bashed, and ill-treated by the police (a behavior that that has become synonymous with the Indian police), and that's how an entire hour passes through. But after that, the movies switches gears, the story takes a turn and we realize that whatever we have seen so far is a big lie, and amazing details and events start to unravel on screen one by one, each more bizarre than the last one. For details, of course you need to watch the movie, I won't spoil it for you.

Story is believable, though with a bit of stretch of imagination, and is very well laid out in a non-linear sequence of events. The acting is top-notch, especially from Vijay Setupathi as always, who is Mr. Dependable in Tamil Cinema. The surprize package is Anurag Kashyap, who has in some scenes, dare I say, even outdone Setupathi. I can say without a second thought that this is Anurag Kashyap's best film, and his best film is ironically not his directorial, but his playing the antagonist. I don't know much about the director or the rest of the cast and crew, so I won't talk about them, but they have all done a fabulous job.

One final comment. I wish Bollywood would learn something from its cousins (Mollywood, Kollywood and Sandalwood). Apart from Maharaja, today I also watched Bhaiyya Ji (starring Manoj Bajpayee who starred in the first gangs of Wasseypur, one of the highest rated movies directed by Anurag Kashyap), which had so much buzz about it, at least much more than Maharaja had, and it just was a pathetic movie, so much so that I had to wipe it from my mind to feel good about myself. Fortunately, I watched Maharaja soon after that and I feel great now.

This movie (if you can call it that) is an incoherent mess of unfunny scenes. I kid you not, the funniest scene in this borefest is the cameo of the guys from fukrey movie franchise.

This movie is only a poor attempt at comedy, and does not have an iota of fear-inducing horror. I doubt that even a 5 year old child would be scared by the few jump scares in this movie.

There is barely a story, which only gets like 15-20 minutes of the actual runtime. The script is almost non-existent. Looks like instead of a script, somebody just lazily jotted out notes for possible scenes in the name of script, and then asked the actors to perform them as they saw fit.

The acting is atrocious, and Katrina Kaif is the worst offender. To her credit, it is not for lack of trying. Jackie Shroff's character is more a caricature than a villainous character. Only Siddhant and Ishaan showed better acting chops, though that's not much to say, given how low the bar was for acting in this movie.

Looking at the imdb rating (5.9 at the time of writing), I thought to give it a try on OTT, but I honestly want my time back. It's not worth a watch even on OTT. I'd recommend you to watch any of the classific indian horror comedies (e.g. Bhool Bhulaiya, Stree) rather than wasting time over this.

I thought Bhoot Police (featuring Saif, Arjun, Yami Gautam and Jacqueline) was bad, but compared to Phone Bhoot, it now looks like a masterpiece. Sure, Bhoot Police had bad acting, cheesy dialogues, mindless story, but at least it had acting, dialogues and story. By comparison, Phone Bhoot is a directionless, storyless, acting-less, inconsistent piece of hot mess.

For a film that had 13 years in the waiting, Avatar: The way of water is visually satisfying, but nothing more.

Given that it follows after Avatar, which was arguably the most awaited movie of its time and was also the highest grosser for 13 years (discounting the brief period that it was temporarily dethroned by Avengers: Endgame), the expectations were obviously through the roof for this sequel, and it delivered. Well, almost did. Well, at least in some departments.

First, let talk about the positives: Visuals: If Avatar told us what 3D is, the way of water reminds us how powerful CGI, motion-capture, creative imagination, vivid colorful canvases are at creating breathtaking visuals. The movie, especially the ocean scenes are unparalleled in cinema history, and probably will remain so until Avatar 3. You lose yourself in the flora and fauna of Pandora and don't want to go back to the real world.

Character development: This is a big improvement since the first movie. There are tons of new characters, and this time the characters are more fleshed out and little more human and relatable. Though this improvement is limited to the Sully family and Colonel Quaritch.

Now, let's talk about the negatives: Storyline: The story is flawed to say the least. All the characters motivations in this movie are either stupid or downright absurd. RDA's motivation to send a new mission to Pandora isn't Unobtainium anymore, but revenge for Quaritch. Seriously? Jake's motivation to join the sea clan. First, what convinces him that Quaritch won't just kill the Omatikaya people, and second Jake's just involving the Metakayina people in his war unnecessarily, signing their death warrants.

If I had to guess.. the only real motivation is Cameron's incessant urge to cash in Avatar's success and his obsession with the ocean.

Duration: The movie clocks in at 3 hrs 12 minutes, and yet the story is wafer-thin. For all the hullabaloo about it, the ocean first features in the movie 45 minutes in. There is one particular scene which goes on for 30-40 minutes and story barely moves forward; not saying it isn't beautiful, it's serene, it's pristine, it's like poetry in 3D. The final battle also drags on for about an hour, and yets feels repetitive, reminiscent of so many yesteryear movies like Titanic, Apocalypse now etc. Many a times, the movie feels like a documentary about how beautiful and varied ocean life is.

Underused characters: Apart from the Sullys and Quaritch are underused. Tonowari, Ronal and the sea clan are inexplicably missing from the final battle, which goes on for almost an hour. In the bad guys, it's Quaritch all the way, others are just there to make up numbers. General Ardmore is introduced as if she is going to be an important character, but disappears completely pretty soon.

My favorite characters from this movie were Kiri and Lo'ak. Spider is another important character to look out for, I have a strong feeling that he'll turn villain in movie 3 or 4.

I had a lot more to write about it, but most people won't read this far anyhow. I'd summarize it by saying that Avatar: The way of water is a worthy sequel, if a sequel was really required. I also think that this might just break Avatar's box office collection, though it's a tall mountain to be scaled.