In my Hyderabad post, I also have a short section on films set in Hyderabad, including the small industry of Dakhni language Hyderabadi films, and I write about Hyderabad’s movie theaters (Prasads!). You may also be interested in my posts on Ramoji Film City and Telugu music (mostly film music, lots of Keeravani, amazing stuff!). For more recommendations for Telugu culture, I have a reading list as well.
I’ve only seen around 20 Telugu films (almost all from post-2010, and almost all of them big star movies, so it's a limited sampling), and unfortunately very few have been any good. I often find Telugu cinema to be more sociologically interesting than artistically interesting, but it has its charms, and it also has Rajamouli, who is so good that he makes up for all of the bad movies I’ve seen.
If I were writing this some years ago, I’d be excited to introduce people to one of the world’s greatest directors who few outside of India and perhaps even South India have heard of. At this point, though, Rajamouli needs no introduction. I will just say that RRR is worthy of its acclaim, and Eega is equally an all-timer for me.
I saw Eega in theaters in 2012, without subtitles, and it’s one of the most gloriously fun and creative films I’ve ever seen. Though it isn’t a silent film, it’s one of the few great heirs of the silent comedy tradition in modern cinema. I believe it was only the fifth Indian film I had seen at that point, and it is the one that really sparked an interest in Indian cinema that ultimately brought me to India. It is very likely that had I not made the impulse decision to see Eega, based on a rave review that I chanced upon (here, from the writer Josh Hurtado who has been a champion of Indian films at genre festivals and was involved in some capacity in RRR’s US distribution and awards campaign), I would never have gone to India, gotten into traveling, or started this blog. I didn’t even know what “Telugu” was before seeing the film. I’ve come a long way. It’s funny how one film can radically change your life. The Eega Effect.
After Eega, I tried watching some earlier Rajamouli films, though the only ones I could find good quality versions of were Magadheera and Maryada Ramanna (this was over a decade ago, streaming was limited then and there wasn’t a great scene for Indian Blu-rays, I’m not sure which of his films are available now in good quality on streaming). Both films were a mixed bag for me overall and at times tough to sit through (these were among the first Indian films I saw, I’m curious to rewatch them). Still, I found a lot to enjoy in them, especially Magadheera, which was full of inspired zaniness and ambition, had exceptional song sequences, and was a terrific introduction to Ram Charan (in only his second film), who has improved as an actor since then but was clearly a capital-S Star right out the gate (I was also greatly charmed* by Kajal Aggarwal).
I was really excited for Rajamouli’s next film Baahubali, which I saw in theaters, and I found it to be very enjoyable from start to finish in addition to being boundary pushing for Indian cinema, though it didn’t knock me out (but I have heard that part two, which I have not seen, takes it to another level). And then RRR fulfilled and even exceeded the high expectations I had after Eega. I look forward to Rajamouli’s future work and to catching up on his earlier films, including revisiting those I have already seen.
Most critics I read get it, but I feel a lot of people I talk to in India actually often underrate Rajamouli, focusing exclusively on his film’s visuals, scale, and action and overlooking that it’s his inventiveness, storytelling skills, and attention to detail that makes his films tick above all else. There’s a reason that Rajamouli is Indian cinema’s biggest international success in decades and not the iconic Tamil director Shankar, who is usually as good when it comes to visuals and crazy action scenes but lacks Rajamouli’s storytelling chops. You don’t have to like Rajamouli’s films (he makes a certain brand of over the top cinema that I wouldn’t expect everyone to dig, though I’d hope everyone at least gives his films a chance), but if you can’t see the difference, there’s no helping you.
Of course, some significant portion of the credit goes to his father V. Vijayendra Prasad, who is his co-writer. Outside of his work with his son, I think the only film I’ve seen that he wrote/co-wrote was the Hindi Bajrangi Bhaijaan, which had a great script. I am very curious to watch his early Telugu films, as well as some of the films he wrote and directed (Rajanna got good reviews, Srivalli did not, and he has since retired from directing saying that he wasn’t good at it). I’m not sure which of his films as a writer are considered to be good. I can’t find the interview now, but I recall Rajamouli said that the reason he became a director is because he would hear his dad narrate great stories, but then a lot of the films turned out poorly, and he wanted to do justice to his dad’s stories. I found that to be very touching (it’s a bit different, though not necessarily contradictory, from what he says about his filmmaking origins in his New Yorker interview, which I recommend, it’s a great read).
Outside of Rajamouli’s work, I sadly don’t have a ton to recommend in Telugu cinema, and artistically it’s almost certainly the weakest of the four South Indian industries, despite having the biggest budgets. I’d love to see someone with a good understanding of the industries and the region attempt to explain why. Other languages have better developed literature as well, I imagine that's related. Is one plausible explanation that the major players in the modern Telugu industry are from farming families that struck it rich and invested it in film, while other industries grew out of theatre and literary traditions, which may have also been the case for the Telugu industry when it was based in Madras, before the move to Hyderabad, which thus explains what appears to be an artistic decline in the past few decades? My criticisms of mainstream Telugu cinema, hardly novel, also apply to Tamil cinema, and the industries have much in common with their star driven, hero-worship cinema, but I find there to be much more actual quality work in the Tamil film industry. I’m curious about the socio-economic, cultural, and historical factors at play. The roots of Indian cinema’s cross state variation is a really interesting and underexplored topic to me.
The best non-Rajamouli Telugu film I’ve seen is maybe Vedam (from director Krish whom I haven’t seen anything else from) which is a hyperlink movie that I thought managed to work as a mainstream Telugu movie while also working on a subtler dramatic level. I watched it over a decade ago and honestly don’t remember it well, but I gave it 7/10. I’m not sure it’s really worth seeking out, but maybe I’ll revisit it and report back one day. The second best I’ve seen is probably Hanuman (from director Prashanth Varma, again the only film of his that I’ve seen) which is a mythological superhero film. It’s entertaining, creative, and well constructed, and it has some great scenes, though it’s a bit too kiddy for me and it was too long and too loud, a common trait for Telugu movies. I’d give it 6/10, worth seeking out if it sounds good to you, and I’m interested in watching more from the filmmaker.
Beyond those, I don’t think there’s a single Telugu film I’d rank above 5/10, but most of the films I’ve seen had elements that I’ve liked and have shown promise from the filmmakers (not to mention the stars, who are often better than their films). I like the over-the-top, mythic filmmaking, and a number of the films have had very fun action and song sequences, strong visuals, charming comic scenes, great performances, etc, and some have had interesting story elements, but generally they fail to cohere into a quality whole, and/or they have good first halves and dull second halves, and are invariably too long and too loud (Dasara would be a recent and very good example of one that didn’t work for me overall but had a lot of promise and quality work in it, and it had much more going for it than the typical Telugu star film).
Unlike some, I’m not opposed to the “variety show” structure of mainstream Telugu masala films, but too often the bulk of the disparate elements being thrown together aren’t good enough and I’m just bored after a certain point. Looking at most of the films I’ve seen, if they cut 30-60 minutes they’d improve a lot, not just because they’d be more focused but also because so much of it just isn’t any good. If the songs are great, the action is great, the comedy is great, etc, I’d be okay with a plot that just thinly strings these together and is light on its feet, but instead we usually get some crushingly boring overlong melodrama. People like these movies though, or at least they used to. I remember seeing Baadshah in theaters in 2013 in the US with a sold out audience. During the comedy scenes, the multigenerational family crowd laughed as hard as I’ve ever heard an audience laugh before, it was Borat level hysteria in the theater. I haven’t seen that happen since. Now everybody is just on their phones half the movie. I miss the before times.
Thankfully, even bad Telugu movies tend to have a lot of truly bonkers craziness that you really have to see to believe, which makes them more tolerable. There are examples in almost every movie, but shoutout to the one that had a song where the female dancer sings “men wish they could be gynecologists so they could touch my body.” (from Acharya, I kinda liked that movie…) I tend to have a lot of fun when I watch a mainstream, star-driven Telugu movie, even though I’m usually totally exhausted by the end, and I can really only do one or two a year without losing my patience with them. I’m not going to list more films that I’ve seen since I don’t really recommend any, but feel free to message me if you want to chat about Telugu movies.
Of course, I have much more to watch, including the big star films and the smaller, more “serious” films, which do exist (C/o Kancharapalem is probably the most acclaimed of recent years, I haven’t seen it), as well as the classics, though I’m not sure if decent prints are available for anything, and I should also point out that quality subtitles are usually lacking in Telugu films. I’m most excited to watch Mayabazaar, the early Ram Gopal Varma films, some of the films, though I’m not sure which, from Singeetam Srinivasa Rao and K. Viswanath, and Mani Ratnam’s sole Telugu film Geethanjali. (Does anybody have a good answer why the industry has moved away from smaller, quieter films to an even greater extent than other industries since then? I gave a theory above but I mostly made it up.) I hope to update this with some quality recommendations one day.
I do feel compelled to point out that I loved Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Hindi film Animal so much that I am eager to watch his (highly controversial) Telugu debut Arjun Reddy. And I loved Vikram Kumar’s Tamil film 24, but I haven’t seen any of his Telugu films. I’ve heard good things about Sukumar’s Rangasthalam and Pushpa, though I didn’t think much of his earlier film Nenokkadine.
Also, though I haven’t seen the film Alluda Makaja beyond this clip, I have watched this Chiranjeevi action sequence well over a dozen times, I think it is one of the greatest action sequences in the history of Indian cinema (though I must give a warning that there is some animal cruelty in the video). Even beyond some awesome old fashioned stuntwork and practical effects, you also don’t see such precise shots and edits anymore.
I won’t link to great dance sequences, there are too many to include, but I can’t not mention my Bangaru Kodipetta obsession, both the original and the remake, and also the fruit/navel nexus in K. Raghavendra Rao’s filmography (I legitimately love this, the good kind of navel-gazing if you ask me, and see also Taapsee Pannu’s story of her debut in one of his films, starting around 11 minutes into the clip).
I don’t know of any beginner’s guides to Telugu cinema, nor do I know of any critics who have been writing about the industry with enough depth to act as good guides. I have a few Telugu film related things to read that I’ve recommended in the Andhra/Telangana and Hyderabad recommended reading sections, but I’ll briefly summarize them here. There are several NTR biographies on Amazon (no idea which are good) though the chapter on NTR in Luther Narendra’s Hyderabad is a great read. There’s an excellent long read on the NTR and Chiranjeevi families and their fan bases and rivalries and castes and politics and more. There’s the book Politics as Performance: A Social History of Telugu Cinema by S.V. Srinivas which looks interesting, as well as the more accessible, less academic sounding The Age Of Heroes: The Incredible World of Telugu Cinema by Mukesh Manjunath. And the novel The Mythologist by Vamsee Juluri is the one work of fiction I know of set in the Telugu film industry, at least partly. I enjoyed reading the chapter on the female action star Vijayashanthi in the book The Untold Charminar (see my Hyderabad reading recommendations). Two things I noted down from that chapter are that Naxalite films are a thing, and that perhaps the reason Telugu cinema had a superstar female action hero and none of the other industries did is because of the dual phenomena of a very popular women’s movement and an anti-feudalism movement in Andhra (I would say these things are just inexplicable and Telugu cinema defies analysis).
As for critics who cover the industry, one of my favorite Indian film critics Baradwaj Rangan occasionally writes about Telugu films. I’ve found the young Telugu critic Sagar Tetali to be good, here’s his top films of 2023 list, here’s his Letterboxd page. Here are the Film Companion best of lists of ‘23 and ‘22, and their 2010s list (from going through these lists, I honestly don’t get the sense that I’ve missed a lot of great stuff). I usually check the reviews on Film Companion (which has now morphed into the India version of Hollywood Reporter), even though I don’t particularly pay attention to who is writing them. One problem I have with critics writing about the Telugu industry is they don’t always differentiate between something that is actually very good and is worth seeking out for any filmgoer from something that is merely good for a Telugu movie and is worth watching for avid viewers of Telugu movies. I understand their perspective, it just isn’t useful for me (I'd say it's true of most Indian critics, not just Telugu ones). I do like a Substack called Seeti Maar where the writer gives year by year summaries of the Telugu industry, the films that released, how they performed, the legacy of them, and what he thought of them. I like the American critic Danny Baldwin a lot, he recently began writing reviews of most of the big Telugu movies, but few seem worth watching, and I think he got burnt out and gave up on them, which happens to most of us. Two other American critics, Simon Abrams (unfortunately he has no tags for Telugu movies, but you can try browsing through his Twitter he also did that great New Yorker interview with Rajamouli) and Josh Hurtado, also cover Telugu films from time to time, and Josh as I mentioned has been instrumental in bringing Telugu films to festivals and raising awareness of them in the US. The three American critics are all more patient and forgiving than I am, I think, perhaps I’ve been in India too long, but I very much appreciate their enthusiasm for low brow cinema. The other Indian film critics I like rarely write about Telugu films unless it's a massive crossover title (basically a Rajamouli film or the once or twice a year “pan-Indian” film). Prathyush Parasuraman wrote probably the best and most interesting analysis of Rajamouli’s career that I’ve seen, even if I disagree with his framings on some of it (basically I’m not as “woke” as he is).
By the way, Oka Oori Katha played in the Director’s Fortnight section at Cannes in 1978. No Telugu film has ever played in competition at one of the major fests, so this is probably the most prestigious festival category a Telugu film has been in. Granted, it was by Mrinal Sen, and I’m pretty sure was his only Telugu film (no idea what the story behind this is).
I’m excited to learn that Ebert gave four stars to the independent Telugu film Vanaja, which I’ve never heard of! The director only made this one movie, which was his master’s thesis at Columbia University, and I think that’s the only Telugu film Ebert ever wrote about. Ebert actually visited Hyderabad, though in his writeup he doesn’t mention any Telugu films.
And curiously, Thomas Jane’s first ever film performance is in the 1987 Padamati Sandhya Ragam, five years before he debuted in an American film. I found this while researching Vijayashanti, aka "The Action Queen of Indian Cinema," though this is a cross-cultural romance. It’s interesting, there aren’t a ton of connections between Hollywood and Telugu cinema, but two of the biggest ones ever were with actors who played The Punisher. I await Dolph Lundgren’s Telugu debut.
Lastly, I wanted to mention the comedian Brahmanandam, who, according to Wikipedia, “holds the Guinness World Record for the most screen credits for a living actor, appearing in over 1000 films to date,” the vast majority of which are Telugu. I’m pretty bad at recognizing faces but after seeing a few Telugu movies and watching a bunch of trailers I started noticing that he’s in nearly all of them, and it always makes me happy seeing him when he pops up in his brief comic relief appearances. Unfortunately I haven’t seen him much in recent years. He’s still very active, but in 2023 he was only in 9 films, compared to 20 films in 2013. I actually think he’s quite a good actor. I doubt it would happen but I could totally see him in the lead role in a “serious” movie and killing it. (By serious, I don’t necessarily mean serious in tone, but as in a movie that takes the art and craft of cinema seriously, as opposed to the fundamentally unserious nature of most Telugu movies.) This is true of most big name Telugu actors, I think.
*"Greatly charmed" is code for "overtaken with lust."
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