So does Baahubali live up to the hype?

The biggest, most expensive and greatly anticipated film of the year is finally out and unleashes on the screen in burst after dazzling burst of colour - a visual feast (rather feat) with the story slowly yet surely unfolding from the midst. When scenes of Baahubali reminded Karan Johar of Avatar, he would have surely meant the luminescent blue butterflies and water falling in a dozen shades. So it’s fairy tale meeting superhero fable meeting quintessential Telugu period cinema in Baahubali – The Beginning. Though it begins slow, the film draws you in hypnotically and before you know it, you are sharing Sivudu’s sense of wonder and mystery of what lies above the majestic waterfalls at the edge of his village.

Sivudu, played by Prabhas unbeknownst of being the mighty one or Baahubali, is at best amused with his physical prowess as he crosses mountains and carries shivlings like Atlas bearing the world. He is the brave heart with a golden heart while the arrogant Bhallaladeva, played to the hilt by Rana Daggubati, is the baddie with bulging biceps, who bashes and bullies with a testosterone display we haven’t seen before.

In the meanwhile, we meet three powerful women on whose shoulders the film really rests, at least equally. The first is Avantika, the brave warrior played by Tamanna Bhatia. Her now tough, now soft chemistry with Prabhas is interesting wherein she’s seen bearing the shining armour most of the time. But he is clearly the knight in the second half, setting out to rescue another strong woman, Devasena imprisoned at the kingdom of Bhallaladeva. Anushka Shetty’s performance as the tattered princess with the unbreakable spirit is definitely commendable. But the bravest of them all is Ramya Krishna playing the queen mother, the undisputed hero of the flashback episode. Her powerful lines delivered with great aplomb jar the men around into awe-inspiring submission.  

Interesting characterisation and engaging visuals stand out as big strengths.

So do the fight choreography and stunts. The grand palaces and beautifully detailed outfits of the main characters take things a good notch or three up from Rajamouli’s 2009 magnum opus, Magadheera. The same couldn’t be said with as much conviction of the background score and songs except "Sivuni aana" which stays on in the mind till much after.

He is certainly one of the most entertaining storytellers of Indian cinema and a master craftsman too doing effortlessly what he does best – weaving a drama of such grand scale, where valour and human folly intermingle for great effect, tempering the tale with just a touch of romance and a few small surprise tricks along the way to keep us nicely occupied.

There are elements we’ve seen before – abandoned child brought up by childless jungle chief and his wife – but the film marches on with a "what the heck" attitude anyway.

History and histrionics, gore and grandeur, energy and entertainment; the first part of Baahubali has enough of these for us to look forward to the second, releasing next year.

Does it live up to the hype, though? Not strictly. But then, we are a movie-crazy lot and love every shard of the drama an entertaining film of this magnitude packs into its two-and-a-half-hour run time. The mania off screen also adds up, perhaps.