The Raja Saab review: This has Prabhas, but it's not Baahubali. It's just a monstrously bad film that fails to hypnotise

January begins with a film which will make you say, ‘What were they thinking?! Are they high on their own supply?’

Sensible folk will wait until Scary Movie 6 releases later this year to have fun because this film is a terrible cliche, worse than Brahmāstra. At least the latter had some great music!

And the cliches! Let us do the cliche countdown.

Haunted Mansion like Hotel California. you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave! The awesome thing about this mansion is that the three heroines get a wardrobe change with every scene… We shall get to that number of heroines in a bit.

The mansion has a Sphynx cat that wanders aimlessly.

A Tumbbad copycat turned into ‘rakt pishaach’ who lives inside a well that appears anywhere, outdoors and indoors! Thanks to Sanjay Dutt, the evil greedy grandpa who is a hypnotist…!

Homage is paid to Harry Potter by making chess pieces like soldiers come alive…

Mona Lisa Effect be damned, we have generic paintings with eyes that move literally!

A croc that has to be wrestled, a man in a cassock called Brother Rip who finds himself in a coffin, we also have a sidekick ‘mama’ (obviously the filmmakers don’t know the idiom ‘mama banana’) who has been added for the laughs that don’t come…

‘Use self hypnosis to save yourself from the evil exorcist hypnotising ghost atma of your grandfather!’ That’s Boman Irani’s explanation for the unbelievable special effects you watch on screen. I raised my coffee to cheer his demise!

Also gobsmacked by the casual misogyny from Prabhas who seduces not one but three women by just existing. What was the actor thinking? At least in Bahubali he dies in order to romance the second heroine. But wait! I forget that the film title reminds us that Prabhas is the quintessential ‘raja beta’, I mean ‘The Raja Saab’… Ugh! The odd grammar in the title should keep the literate audience away! For the rest, there’s a Bappi Lahiri remix where Prabhas is attempting to dance in a shiny mirror patchwork jacket and the women are dressed in silver lame bought wholesale for us to enjoy.

The song doesn’t distract us, because I’m mad that they did not use the nun trope (not going to dignify the vapid actress who is supposed to be a postulant) and call her Devi Valak! They use the skeletal hands coming out from behind a painting though… What a waste of an opportunity!

Then there’s special effects like grandpa grinning on his throne and having Raja Saab (should the car company sue the filmmakers?) drown in sand a la The Mummy. There’s Zarina Wahab praying to Durga ma, also paying homage to Rocky Aur Rani movie by suddenly having everyone in red ready to dance the Durga puja dance…

Not to forget the face trying to come out of the wall like in The Frighteners! By the time Prabhas is attempting to open his ‘overacting ki dukaan’ by going through all the emotions at the hospital, you just wish you could switch off the AC vent so Sanjay Dutt’s smoke-ghost cannot come into the room to try and strangle Zarina Wahab. Dude! There’s a huge window in the room, use that!

What a pity nobody in the audience was scared of the tribe from Vecna like evil things. The filmmakers probably live in a bubble because on Instagram, they had a meme which described Vecna as an onion bhajji (bhajiya or pakoda). Those jump scares don’t make us jump any more.

The one person who had the most fun in the movie is Sanjay Dutt. He had to just laugh an evil laugh (mostly) or scream at the people in the movie and the audience of course: You are in my trance!

I emerged from the trance laughing at the audacity of the teaser to part two where they’ve got Prabhas to play the Joker. DC comics should sue!

(Manisha Lakhe is a freelance writer with Mint. She writes on movies, shows, travel, and more.)