The dynamic duo, Mass Maharaja Ravi Teja and Harish Shankar, have reunited for Mr. Bachchan, which hit theaters today amidst high expectations. Without further ado, dive into our review to see how it fares.

Story:

Anand, aka Bachchan (Ravi Teja), is a straight-laced income tax officer suspended due to his unwavering honesty. Upon returning to his hometown, he falls in love with Jikki (Bhagyashree Borse), who soon reciprocates his feelings. Just as things start looking up, Bachchan is reinstated and tasked with raiding the home of a powerful local figure, Mutyam Jaggaiah (Jagapathi Babu). What follows is a daring mission that tests Bachchan’s resolve, revealing unexpected challenges and twists.

Positive Points:

When Mr. Bachchan was announced, many doubted the idea of remaking the hit film Raid. However, Harish Shankar manages to surprise by keeping the essence of the original while tailoring the story to suit Telugu audiences.

Ravi Teja shines in a role that seems custom-made for him. As the determined IT officer and the romantic lead with a deep admiration for legends like Kishore Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan, he delivers a performance full of energy and charm. His on-screen chemistry with Bhagyashree Borse is delightful and adds a refreshing touch to the narrative.

Bhagyashree Borse is a standout in her role, bringing both glamour and emotion to the screen. Her performance is bound to catch the attention of many in Tollywood. Jagapathi Babu, too, leaves an impression, particularly in his intense exchanges with Ravi Teja. The rest of the cast did their part well.

The film’s comedy, led by Satya, hits the mark, and Mickey J Meyer’s soundtrack adds vibrancy, particularly in the lively and massy songs. The use of retro music during romantic scenes offers a nostalgic feel that fans of Amitabh Bachchan and Kishore Kumar will appreciate.

Minus Points:

Harish Shankar successfully blends elements like romance, action, comedy, and punchy dialogues to entertain mass audiences, particularly in the first half. However, the second half loses its way, straying from the main plot and introducing unnecessary comedy that dilutes the film’s impact. The absence of the same level of intensity and mass appeal that was present in the first half is noticeable.

While Bhagyashree Borse excels in her role, she is underutilised in the second half, with limited screen time that doesn’t do justice to her character. Jagapathi Babu’s character, initially portrayed as a formidable antagonist, fades in the second half, losing the impact built up earlier in the film.

The climax, unfortunately, feels outdated and implausible, even within the mass-entertainment genre. A more meaningful approach to the climax fight could have enhanced the film’s appeal.

Technical Aspects:

As a director, Harish Shankar does well in balancing mass elements with comedy and romance in the first half, but the second half’s pacing and coherence could have been stronger. As a writer, he could have focused more on refining the second half, but when it comes to crafting punch dialogues, he excels.

Cinematographer Ayananka Bose captures the film beautifully, especially during the song sequences. Editor Ujwal Kulkarni could have tightened the second half by cutting unnecessary scenes. Mickey J Meyer’s music stands out, offering a mix of energetic tracks that elevate the film. The production values are solid, and the art department’s efforts to create a retro vibe, particularly in the first half, are commendable.

Verdict:

On the whole, Mr. Bachchan has its moments but caters primarily to mass audiences. Ravi Teja and Jagapathi Babu deliver decent performances, and Bhagyashri Bose adds a touch of glamour, but the second half falls short due to unnecessary comedy and pacing issues. If you’re a fan of Raid, the original movie that inspired Mr. Bachchan, it’s best to temper your expectations.

123telugu.com Rating: 2.75/5

Reviewed by 123telugu Team

Click Here For Telugu Review

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Early in Zoë Kravitz’s charged but scattered directorial debut Blink Twice, a tech tycoon caught in the storm of controversy offers a familiar kind of apology. After “everything that happened,” Slater King (Channing Tatum) says in a video, the billionaire will step back from his company. He regrets his actions and, in an effort to change, will retreat to his private island for reflection. We never find out exactly what Slater did, but in our digital wasteland littered with similarly scripted #MeToo atonements, it doesn’t take much imagination. 

Frida (an excellent Naomi Ackie) seems unbothered by the allegations surrounding Slater or the feigned sincerity of his recorded remorse. When we meet the optimistic aspiring nail designer, she’s sitting on the toilet of her rundown apartment, watching the video of the beleaguered tycoon with adoring eyes, fantasizing about the day the two might meet.

It’s lucky, then, that the next evening, while working as a waitress at a fundraising event, Frida comes face to face with Slater. Their encounter is clumsy but electric — a meet-cute fit for a romantic comedy. She trips on the hem of her dress; he helps her up and holds her gaze. Later that night, as the party thins, Slater asks Frida to fly with him and his crew to his private island. She eagerly accepts the invitation and conscripts her best friend and roommate Jess (Alia Shawkat) to come along. 

If Triangle of Sadness, Glass Onion and The Menu have taught us anything, it’s that a group of strangers in a secluded locale spells trouble. Kravitz, who co-wrote the screenplay with E.T. Feigenbaum, quickly establishes Blink Twice as both social satire satire and horror, yet balancing the two proves to be more challenging as the narrative revs up.

There are no cellphones allowed on Slater’s island. The people on staff, like those in Jordan Peele’s Get Out, wear forced smiles that merely pronounce their vacant stares. Luggage is unnecessary as matching white linen sets are provided for the islanders. Drinks flow, drugs abound and each evening’s dinner is prepared by Slater’s friend, Cody (Simon Rex), using locally farmed produce and served by candlelight. These scenes are sun-kissed and dreamy, facilitating the otherworldly mood of this tropical island. 

Unlike recent eat-the-rich offerings, Blink Twice is only partially about ultra-wealthy bacchanalia. Soon after they arrive, Frida notices strange occurrences on the island. A maid (María Elena Olivares) repeats odd phrases to her; Jess disappears, and Frida realizes her memories are an increasingly patchy assemblage of images. Why can’t she recall the origin of random bruises or the dirt under her fingernails? A similar thing seems to be happening to other women on the island, including Sarah (Hit Man‘s Adria Arjona, excellent), a former contestant on a Survivor-like reality show with whom Frida competes for Slater’s attention. 

Kravitz is primarily interested in sexual violence against women and the psychic toll of trauma. Her film echoes Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, except Kravitz delivers on gore. Vengeance here is, thrillingly, more than an abstraction. There’s also a drifting effort to investigate the simultaneous invisibility and hyper-visibility of Black women, especially early in the film when Frida is at work, but that is disappointingly subsumed by later action. 

As Frida makes sense of these bizarre incidents, she stumbles upon nightmarish truths about Slater’s island; Blink Twice ends up abandoning pretenses of social satire to revel in the machinations of horror. Kravitz, working with DP Adam Newport-Berra (The Last Black Man in San Francisco), reinscribes earlier idyllic images of the island with a touch of malevolence, and turns the coniferous enclave into a haunted arena of fatal obstacles.

There are a few moments when Blink Twice’s busy narrative —  stuffed with twists and turns as it trails Frida’s gripping quest for survival — and its slippery visual language coalesce to realize Kravitz’s ambitions. But Blink Twice is ultimately too scattered, stretched thin by the demands of its weighted themes, conspicuous imagery, half-baked plot points and partially realized characters. 

If Blink Twice succeeds to the extent that it does, that’s largely thanks to a handful of striking performances. Tatum delivers a sturdy turn in a role that requires him to find subtler ways to wield his charm. But it’s Ackie and Arjona who really focus and energize the film. Ackie, who played Whitney Houston in Kasi Lemmons’ 2022 biopic, is a force, offering a powerful portrayal of a woman collapsing under the weight of her trauma. Her performance is raw and vulnerable, extending an invitation to understand the depths of Frida’s character despite the thin sketch.

Alongside Arjona, Ackie also builds a portrait of strength. The relationship between Frida and Sarah models and tests familiar dynamics between women, from petty jealousies to empowering alliances. It’s a credit to Ackie and Arjona that Frida and Sarah’s reactions to the reality of their ordeal register as genuine. Their curdling screams chill spines, their tears stir. The two actors don’t just explore the rage fueling Blink Twice; they tap into it.

Peggy Moffitt, the L.A. fashion model whose Harlequin-like makeup and mime-inspired poses set her apart during the fashion free-for-all of the 1960s, has died at her home in Beverly Hills. She was 86.

Seemingly never out of vogue, Moffitt died Saturday from complications of dementia, her son, Christopher Claxton, told the New York Times.

As the muse of avant-garde designer Rudi Gernreich, she helped convey the futuristic themes of his collections with her unconventional style. She was known for her striking appearance, which included a mask-like white complexion, extended black lashes, black or bright colored eye shadows and an occasional sprinkling of daisies, teardrops or silver triangles on her cheeks.

Her haircut, a short geometric shape by Vidal Sassoon, added to her stylized look, which became an embodiment of the ’60s. She maintained the look long after her modeling career ended.

Moffitt caused a fashion sensation in 1964 when she posed in a topless swimsuit Gernreich designed. It was a racy variation on a schoolboy’s shorts, with suspenders rising between the cleavage. The suit was condemned by the Vatican, the Kremlin and the governments of the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece.

“I agreed to do it only when I finally believed that Rudi wasn’t exploiting me,” Moffitt said. “There really was a message and that message was ‘freedom.’”

Moffitt struck a shy schoolgirl pose before the camera as her husband, William Claxton, a well-known commercial photographer, took the picture in their living room. Several magazines requested something less revealing and Claxton took a second image, this time from the back. One or the other photograph appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world.

The following year, 1965, Moffitt posed in another bold Gernreich invention, a sheer “no-bra” with minimal structure that defied the padded underwear of the 1950s.

“In those days if a model was photographed in lingerie, that was it, she was definitely B-team,” Moffitt told the London Independent newspaper in an interview in 1992.

Richard Avedon, a top photographer for Vogue magazine, was hired to take the picture and Moffitt agreed to pose. “My teenage dream was to have a swimming pool and to work with Avedon every day,” she later confessed.

Her early modeling risks paid off. During Gernreich’s comet ride through fashion’s memorable decade, Moffitt was the free spirit at his side.

“Peggy Moffitt was the epitome of the muse,” said Patty Fox, a former fashion director for Saks Fifth Avenue. “Someone who not only inspired a certain designer but was identified with his work and became a lifelong friend.

“You can’t compare her to supermodels,” Fox said. “They are classically beautiful. She had a look. She created it and stayed with it, something more artificial than natural. She pushed it over the top.”

Moffitt’s distinctive appearance and manner made strong impressions.

“I was told I couldn’t model by every tacky editor and photographer in the world,” Moffitt told author Joel Lobenthal for his book “Radical Rags: Fashions of the Sixties.” Moffitt‘s answer was that she wanted to invent a new way of modeling that raised “the possibility of it being a new art form.”

In carefully planned fashion shows, she changed her attire to suggest first a “Japanese school girl,” then a “Chinese opera star,” among other roles.

“I entertained myself and the audience by regarding the collection as a play, with each outfit a new act or a new character,” Moffitt wrote in “The Rudi Gernreich Book,” which she and Claxton released in 1991. “That meant … drama, jokes, tension and slapstick. I really didn’t model the clothes so much as perform them.”

By the mid-1960s her face and Gernreich’s fashions were inseparable. “We were like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Gilbert and Sullivan, ham and eggs,” she said. They hardly bothered to explain new ideas to each other. “We just knew,’’ Moffitt said. “We became one entity.”

Born in Los Angeles in 1937, the only child of film reviewer and writer Jack Moffitt, Moffitt traced her interest in extreme fashion and makeup to her high school years at the Marlborough School in Los Angeles. Students were required to wear uniforms and forbidden to wear lipstick. ‘’Perhaps therein lies the key to what came next,” she told the Independent in 1992.

At 17, she worked after school at Jax, a Rodeo Drive boutique that carried designer brand clothes including some by Gernreich. But she planned to be an actress, not a fashion model. She graduated from school and went to New York City, where she studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse for two years. Back in Los Angeles she got small parts in several movies, including “You’re Never Too Young” with Jerry Lewis in 1955 and “The Birds and the Bees” with David Niven and Mitzi Gaynor in 1956.

She met Claxton when he was on assignment photographing an actor friend of hers. They were engaged within a few months and married within the year.

Gernreich, Moffitt and Claxton worked to create fashion photographs that were instantly identified with Gernreich’s designs. One of the best known shows Moffitt wearing a stretch knit swimsuit with fencer’s visor and tall boots. In another she wears a mini-dress with clear vinyl stripes that expose bits of her midriff and thigh. The white seamless background in the photos kept the attention on Gernreich’s creations and Moffitt’s evocative poses.

She continued testing new ways to mix fashion and theater. “I’ve got 47 seconds to knock them into Peggy-land,” Moffitt told The Times in 1967. She had recently modeled in a fashion show that ended with her playing mad Ophelia from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” Dressed in a mini-wedding dress by Gernreich, she entered mumbling and staring and ended by screaming as she ran out of the room. “I’m a Method actress at heart,” she explained.

Her modeling style didn’t set trends but Twiggy, London’s waif-like teenage supermodel, credited Moffitt with influencing her. “She taught me how much more a model puts into her work than just a pretty face,” Twiggy wrote in “Twiggy: An Autobiography.” “She consciously controlled the sort of shape she presented to the camera.”

Moffitt admitted her close association with Gernreich came with its limitations. “People thought we were joined at the hip,” she told the Independent in 1992. “It was essential to separate from time to time.”

In the mid-1960s Moffitt and Claxton began spending more time in Europe than Los Angeles. He had photography assignments in London and Paris. She modeled and got a small part in “Blow Up,” the 1966 film classic about the British modeling scene, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.

In the early 1970s they returned to Los Angeles where their only child, Christopher, was born. Moffitt is survived by her son. Claxton died in 2008.

She continued working with Gernreich. That, and her distinctive appearance, limited her options. When Gernreich died in 1985, Moffitt quit the fashion scene.

Decades after she first posed in Gernreich’s styles, the A-line minidresses of that time made a fashion comeback. Moffitt said in interviews that she hoped to find investment partners, reproduce Gernreich’s designs and put her name on the label with his.

“I said to the trademark office that my physicality is representative of Rudi in the way that Mickey Mouse represents Walt Disney,” she explained in a 1998 interview with Vanity Fair magazine.

Even late in life, Moffitt never stopped wearing Gernreich’s designs. She owned more than 300 pieces, some of which were featured in 2012’s “The Total Look,” an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art at the Pacific Design Center, which explored her creative collaboration with Gernreich.

She owned the legal rights to all of the late designer’s creations and had hoped to relaunch the Gernreich brand.

“That I am still wearing his clothes 50 years later is as good a recommendation for someone’s talent as any,” she told The Times in 2013. “The times have changed, but his clothes still hold up for the way we live today.”