Varisu review: Conviction and self-awareness win it for Vijay’s generic masala product

 At one instance, Thee Thalapathy song to be precise, Varisu stops being a film and becomes a showreel of Vijay. The editing turns out to be gaudy and becomes a collage of Vijay’s slo-mo videos that comes across like a fan tribute video you can find on YouTube. In another instance, the movie completely slides into a subplot about saving a girl from human trafficking, and in many instances, it becomes a meta-comedy. Songs and fights arrive exactly where you expect them to come without skipping a beat. But everything that’s supposed to be jarring works because of the conviction with which they are done. It’s silly, dumb, and illogical… but fun.

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Varisu is a mix-mash of many films including Srimanthudu, Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo, Atharintiki Daaredi, and every other iteration of that one story about the succession of the reluctant son, who turns out to be the only hope to save the empire/family. Director Vamshi Paidipally has made a film with a screenplay that comes across as a product of an algorithm that has been fed with keywords: ‘Vijay mass moments’, ‘four fights’, ‘extravagant songs’, ‘masala’, ‘mom-son sentiment’, and ‘Jagapathi Babu’. It features all the age-old tropes of a commercial family entertainer, where the hero ends up fixing the problems of everyone in the family and fighting off one external enemy.

But this isn’t a film about the plot, it is more about the moments it wants to create in the wafer-thin story. Varisu is shameless about being a fan-pandering affair. It’s all one big stage for its hero to dance, and boy he does! Also, it’s heartening to see Vijay’s return to comedy. His scenes with Yogi Babu, though few and fleeting, are the greatest strength of the film. It sets up the tone for what is to come. In the absence of Yogi Babu, Vijay takes up the job of dissing everyone around him. The self-critical comedy frees the film of the shackles of logic. It is pretty self-aware that it makes fun of itself before anyone can. It looks like Vamshi has written the film taking into consideration all the possible criticism it might face, and he has turned them all into badges of honour, which the film proudly flaunts.

That doesn’t give a clean chit to Varisu. As it doesn’t take itself seriously, the flippant nature of the film makes it conflictless. One is not much worried about what’s going to happen next, because it is all common knowledge. There’s no novelty to the experience. We wait for one mass moment after the other or one joke after the other. That makes Varisu more of a product than a film. A product that’s tailor-made for a specific experience, and for a specific set of people. As I walked back, there was a sense of satisfaction of having been on a joyful ride rather than having watched a cinema.