Rajadhiraja

The latest offering from dancer/actor/director Raghava Lawrence titled 'Rajadhiraja - Low Class King' (pronounced as Kink by him for reasons yet to be known) stretches the bad movie phenomenon to unimaginable limits. Watching this badly scripted, badly made, badly acted flick is like getting struck by lightning - you are unsure about the proceedings until it's over, you may survive the hit but it wouldn't leave you unscathed.

Rajadhiraja urges you to keep track of your heartbeats, in between several bizarre sequences, to make sure that you are still alive and had not died and gone to hell. I'm still reeling from the effects it caused me while I was at it. I may not watch any movie at all for a few days to make sure that such a catastrophe doesn't strike me again in such a short span.

The movie kicks off with quite a few kicks delivered by the hero to unknown enemies and when it is over a narrator's voice comes up and asks us to see how everything came down to this. So we get to see Raja's (Lawrence) childhood, his dad, three elder brothers and a sister-like younger girl. In complete contrast to umpteen movies, here the dying father asks the youngest child to educate his elder siblings and turn them into a police officer, an advocate and a doctor - personifications of the three prime establishments which caused his untimely death. So we have the first song where the grown-up Raja welcomes his brothers who are dutifully dressed in a cop's uniform, a lawyer's black garb and a doc's white overalls. Needless to say that these very same brothers have an ideology contrasting that of a social conscious Raja and soon evoke their benefactor's wrath. Their allegiance to a criminal-politician called Shailaja(Mumtaz - minus a lot of kilos) make matters worse. She loves to be draped in saris only to strip them off after a bout of fiery dialogues. Thankfully, Mumtaz's rigorous workout sessions and fat burners have paid off well and we just hope that her newly acquired trim waistline is here to stay.

There are three heroines plus villain Mumtaz and no prizes for guessing why this movie was actually shot, in the first place. I couldn't have been more erroneous when I thought that the village belle who is in desperate need of oil massages from Raja was the sole female lead. Five minutes into the second half and another lissome lass barges into our hero showing footage of his massage sessions and street fights and laments on how she suspected him to be a bad guy until his friend convinced her that he was as pure as gold. Surprise! this girl is the younger sibling of Shailaja. And what happens when the two prepares for a clandestine meet? He gets to roll on a mall's floor to and fro with the fourth leading lady (Kamna Jatmalani) while his current sweetheart is staring down at them with obvious horror. Of course, these proceedings ensure that we get bombarded with yet another song sequence.

Soon, Raja devises and implements several plans to inculcate morality into his brothers and succeeds in most of them. A few glitches here and there on his part take the matters to a really bad climax. When the end credits roll alongside a miniature frame reserved for epilogue we see two heroines with the exception of Kamna alongside Lawrence. The narrator comes alive again and says something. Guess Lawrence will have to be contented with just two.

My advice to anyone attempting to see this one on big screen is to have an ambulance at your disposal. Have a go at it and put your endurance to test. It's a rare experience to come out of the auditorium alive and feeling dead at the same time.

Memorable Quote : "Tamille sonna Rajadhiraja, Englishle sonna Kink of Kink."