I watched Puli even after onslaught of negative reviews and trolling internet memes, not out of curiosity but for pure cinematic guilty pleasure, I had a feeling that this film will be terrible and cheesy after watching the trailer; the audio launch event made it so worse that I was waiting to see what they are up to. Puli isn’t just a bad movie, it is so bad that it’s actually good. They went to an extent with logic-defying plots, insanity of the performances, dialogue, cheesy visual effects, garnish makeups, tacky costumes and mad set pieces. It makes you fall out of your seat laughing and cheering for the awfulness; Few people almost choked on their Popcorn’s, I can’t believe they went there.
This is Vijay’s Great “bad movie” performance; shameless! It break all the rules and make our skins feel just a little bit less constricting. He has done more than terrible acting in some good movies too, but this eclipsed every other film he has acted in his entire career.
The filmmaking is so absurd. The weird innocence of the story was replaced by bad script writing, dialogue, Lilliput and shit. I believe Chimbudevan is somewhat unselfconscious about his terribleness, He has overtaken Lingu in this category. It just stuns all of us, why we choose to watch it. I can’t believe how bad it dipped below quality it automatically shifts to the good category for mediocre filmmaking. I love the sincerity here.
What made Baahubali enjoyable isn’t the same thing that’s making Puli a success. The monsters look stupid, the acting sucks, female leads are only used as a flesh show, it’s duller than watching a plant die. It keeps on surprising us with its awfulness and yet movies like these will make break-even within its opening weekend and keeps making more money moving forward, it’s because we convince ourselves that this one will be different. We still believe in Vijay. What we are forgetting here is that he has become so skilled in successfully making terrible films, they are almost enjoyably bad. Watching his films is like a trip to the dentist, initially they offer a bunch of different flavoured fluorides that all tastes like butt. It’s all varied in terribleness.
I experienced people telling me that criticism is easy and how difficult movie making job is, this is for all those who believes criticizing is unholy. If you are a professional, you’ll have to deal with random people telling you that they could totally personally improve on your skill set. This attitude is particularly common among creative stuff like movie making and music. A lot of us thinks that the director points camera at some stuff and everything happen magically but Puli is of a different level Nobody has control over this film, not even the producers, it’s a level of creative profoundness that most of us never imagined it ever exist. Scenes were poorly lit that actors and background are out of place, whole shots were blocked by one actor with woody emotion and song sequence were out of focus. Hey, if you’re not doing a good job someone has to tell you that right???
The only silver lining and saving grace is Sridevi, she has an enigmatic screen presence and badass believable in her portrayal of the witch queen with a charm. She captivates and overshadows other actors including Vijay. Though its only 15 minutes of screen presence and hardly 10 dialogues, her comic sense, voice modulation And expression is out of the box. She did a better job than both the lead ladies and Sudeep. People fumed that she choose this character over Sivagami in Baahubali, that is a topic on its own, but she is one of the most versatile actors in the industry.
Unlike others I’m not telling anyone not to watch Puli, please go and watch it, you’ll have something to talk with your friends during a mundane weekend or If you want to enjoy it seriously like old fashioned just imagine yourself as an 8-year-old kid and go and watch it with your grandparents. This experience could bond the two generations in your family. My humble advice Don’t choke on popcorns coz it’s unintentionally hilarious.
Life on Road 