Prabhas' Raaja Saab review: Another nail in the coffin of Indian horror comedy genre

It seems pointless, and even absurd, to delve too much into The Raaja Saab -- its shoddiness, crassness, wayward screenplay, a story almost like a laughing stock, and more importantly, the incomprehensible intention behind yanking such a pointless work. After all, when there isn’t much effort put into a film’s writing, why bother to put more into a review of it?

Then again, there is a sense of commitment and integrity one needs to muster even in the face of audaciously thoughtless and senseless work that clearly lacks both, because box-office reports of such star vehicles rarely reflect the difference between good and bad cinema.

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Even if one had vehemently avoided Indian cinema over the past decade like the plague, one would not have remained unhaunted by the country’s laziest genre -- horror comedy. Such has been the genre’s omnipresent dullness that any viewer can jot down the entire plot of The Raaja Saab within minutes of it beginning. A bunch of characters end up in a haunted palace in the middle of a forest in search of the hero’s missing grandfather. You have three heroines, three comedians, and a barrage of supposed jump scares. By now, you already know how everything is going to pan out. The Raaja Saab, that way, doesn’t disappoint by deviating even slightly from what you have figured out.

What is truly disappointing is how director Maruthi and the makers think so little of the audience. The Raaja Saab, of course, has a flashback segment, but the film itself feels like a dial-back to a time when Telugu commercial cinema was about stuffing a few songs and fights into the flimsiest excuse for a story.

All sleaze and no taste

Raju (Prabhas) is a guy, and that’s pretty much all we get to know about him as a person. We are never told why all the women instantly fall for him, because there is very little that he does to make him either good or interesting. He donates a few lakhs for a child’s operation, and that alone seems reason enough for Bessy (Nidhhi Agerwal), Bhairavi (Malavika Mohanan), and Anitha (Riddhi) to fall hopelessly in love with him, despite clearly seeing him three-timing them.

But then again, as per Indian commercial cinema’s long-standing tradition, he is a good guy because he is the hero -- not because he actually does good things. He can mistake one woman for another, make love to her at night, and blame it on alcohol the next morning. The film doesn’t even pretend to justify the presence of three female actors. After umpteen doses of sleaze, when things finally get serious, Raju literally asks the women to leave because they are distracting him from dealing with the demon. And like obedient schoolgirls, they walk out of the frame.

Puerile sense of humour

Moving on to the comedy in this horror-comedy, The Raaja Saab’s idea of humour is stuck in an era when a man turning pitch black after being electrocuted was considered funny, and when the mere mention of the word 'Charminar' was expected to evoke thoughts of a phallus. The defence of such films usually goes like this: films are meant to be enjoyed, not analysed, because they are “just entertainment”. But even by that lenient standard, The Raaja Saab doesn’t offer an iota of enjoyment.

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As for the horror, Sanjay Dutt plays a greedy monster who does various things meant to scare people, though most of it ends up contributing to the film’s unintentional comedy. The real horror of The Raaja Saab, however, lies in the realisation that someone thought it was a good idea to make this film --and that Prabhas, Sanjay Dutt, and everyone else involved agreed to be part of it.