THE CELESTIAL AMONG THE TERRESTRIAL

Many believe there is an afterlife….up in the heavens; or, in hell. Departed souls are supposed to rise up to their celestial abodes. But how cool would it be if heavenly beings showed up on earth instead!

Well, that is exactly the basic plot of “ನಾರದ ವಿಜಯ” (‘Narada Vijaya’, which means ‘Triumph of Narada’), a 1980 Kannada film. The movie was a musical masterpiece― each track is a classic. The film yielded a whopper of a return to the producers.

Sage Narada (Anant Nag) descends to earth and interacts with ordinary humans. But then, folks mistake him for his look-alike, Vijay (Anant Nag), a police officer. The ‘carbon copies’, that is, Vijay and Sage Narada befool the former’s romantic interest, Radha (Padmapriya). A wacky policeman in plainclothes, Gurupada (MP Shankar) is beguiled too.

In the meantime, Lakshmipathi (KS Ashwath), a brilliant scientist gets kidnapped and his invention― an unreal camera that can instantly freeze people in front of it― is used for bank heists. The utterly chaotic, if not absurd, events that ensue are the crux of the comic tomfoolery in the film.

With the able assistance of the great sage, Vijay expectedly brings both kingpins of the criminal gang, Narayan (Sudheer) and Gupta (Thoogudeepa Srinivas) and their minions to book…but, not before the goons are all given a good shellacking.  

Director Siddalingaiah has done his best to extract laughs― he’s used both refined drollery and cheap buffoonery in MD Sundar’s script. Notwithstanding a conceptually good plot, the comedic content and structure in the flick are slapstick at places; execution could have been more refined.

Ashwath-Vaidi’s musical compositions, set to the lyrics of legendary Chi. Udaya Shankar, became very popular― each of the tracks was a chartbuster. On technical merit, the movie is tolerable, if not tacky or tawdry.

Anant Nag has acted with great aplomb, particularly in his rendition of the sage; he scores well on comedic quotient. Padmapriya is cast in a candy-floss role. MP Shankar is cheesy; Loknath, Thoogudeepa Srinivas, Hema Choudhary, Sudheer and others constitute the supporting cast.

They say, language of art is celestial in origin. In this movie, the script of art is terrestrial in operation.

I rate (liberally) this comedy, one in the ‘slapstick’ sub-genre: 7.0 on 10!


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