Brahmastra review: Familiar fantasy elements in a movie with spectacular special effects

Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt in 'Brahmastra'. (Screen grab)

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… They mean, in Mumbai, there is Durga Puja. A DJ with ‘Rockstar’ moves is playing songs and Ravan burns spectacularly. Suddenly a princess appears and the DJ is stunned. It’s Isha (Alia Bhatt)! Here is where you begin the drinking game: Each time Alia says, ‘Kaun ho tum?’ (Who are you?) or yells out his name, ‘Shivaaaa!’, you down a strong alcoholic drink of your choice. Expect to be inebriated by intermission.

The film touches on our rich Indian mythology and stories of Shiva and other deities, but it doesn’t plunge into the abundance. It merely skims the surface of it all…

No words to describe my love for ‘Kesariya’ in Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi (in that order) and a thousand bows to Sid Sriram for showing us that we can romance in so many languages. And lots of love for the ‘Deva Deva’ song for the sheer energy. That said, I missed seeing the Star Wars crawl…

Help me Obi-Wan… Guru (Amitabh Bachchan) plays Obi-Wan and Yoda and will train if young Padwan is ready to accept that he is destined to be a Jedi. But is the Jedi ready to fight his dad who looks more like Surtur (an enemy of Asgard and Thor) and Voldemort than Brahmadev? That brings us to the dialogue in the movie. It is so cringey, you ask why Mouni Roy who plays Voldemort’s main minion calls two super cool characters ‘Scientist’ and ‘Artist’ while Isha/Alia looks wide-eyed at DJ Shiva/Ranbir and says, ‘Kaun ho tum?’

But Ranbir is in love with her (this instant love brews faster than a teabag and is just as pointless) and as J.K. Rowling has said, Lily Potter saved Harry because she covered him with a ring of fire… I mean, Love. And the ‘guru’ Amitabh Bachchan explains ‘Darth Vader is your daddy’...

If you’re used to watching South movies dubbed in Hindi, you would have noticed that the villains speak Bhojpuri. Warning: You will choke on your caramel popcorn when you hear Bhojpuri out of nowhere in this film. But wait, Voldemort’s main minion Junoon (Mouni Roy) has converted villagers into zombies who say, ‘Ashram’ instead of ‘Brains’. Why Mouni Roy didn’t Google map the location of the super secret ashram as Nagarjuna does in the movie, I have no idea… Also logic says, if she knew that her ‘payal’ wearing assistant is dead, then she could easily figure out where the ashram was. But Alia is suddenly Aishwarya Rai in Devdas, screaming, ‘Shivaaaa…’

Also zombie legend demands that when baddies scratch the good guys, the poison spreads in their bodies and they die, and how I wish the scratch did infect her… Alas, we have to hear, ‘Kaun ho tum?!’ again! No amount of fancy special effects are going to take away from the ghastly dialogue or the hotch-potch of a story. And everyone and their uncle has seen Anakin go to the dark side, but Ranbir, oh Ranbir… I did want the story to work for him. But what can you do when they give him dialogue like: Tum meri button ho!’

You should fall out of love with anyone who says such things. Poor Isha. She has to smile again and again and again with all this triggering/pushing buttons happening around him. I’m not even going to ask why Shiva suddenly says, ‘I don’t want power’ when all he’s done is tap into his dreams to help ‘Artist’ and then reach the super secret ashram.

Scene from Brahmastra (Screen grab)

Why are there Harry Potter characters who can do magic of their own at the super secret Hogwarts? How does fire babe Junoon/Mouni suddenly harness water energy (did the SFX team watch the K-drama Alchemy of Souls)? How can the baddies wear the ‘payal’ and ‘bangle’ that belong to the good guys and channel their powers? Why is the scientist named Mohan Bhargav? Why do bad guys yell when they attack (Saurav Gurjar plays the baddie who should’ve been Hagrid, really)? Why does the ultimate baddie look like Sauron? Why do the writers think sleepy grandpas are funny? Why are we replicating Terminator 2 (Judgement Day) SFX in a car chase?

So much to cringe, but one thing’s for sure, we are capable of producing some world-class effects. But this is not Bahubaali, or even Ajooba - those movies had stories that were unique (even though dolphin as mama is as bad as ‘my son is a crossbreed of lion and a tiger’), which made them watchable. This film has lots of flash (ha, literally!) but the mish-mash story drags the film down to groan-land.

Why did I enjoy the film, though? One, the song 'Kesariya', of course. The song plays rather strategically in the film and I was glad for it. And two, the movie is a spectacle worthy of the big screen. Small mercies, eh? I admit that the story starts out really well and then it trips over its own imagined greatness. It should have been called Brahmastra: Attack of the Fantasy Film Clones…

Brahmāstra Part One: Shiva released in theatres on September 9, 2022