Oh, Peddi.

That ‘love track’ is really all kinds of terrible, isn’t it? I begin here only because, in a film full of slow-motion elevation attempts and reaction shots, it is this portion that evoked the strongest reaction from me. Peddi (Ram Charan) ogles Achiamma (Janhvi Kapoor), and this is rivalled only by the more perverse camerawork. He describes her facial features to his friend, but the camera has no interest in Janhvi’s face. He declares that he can no longer wait to touch her, and goes on to stalk, hug, and kiss her as she freezes in shock. And this gets worse when a subsequent song celebrates Peddi’s ‘love’. And this gets even worse when, confronted about his actions, Peddi justifies them by claiming that touch is the only way he knows to show love. I mean, sure, buddy, but perhaps first find out whether the other person wants to be touched?

Otherwise, I felt very little across this three-hour-nine-minute mishmash. You know how we sometimes say that films suffer from the lack of a good premise? Peddi has the opposite problem. This film has half-a-dozen premises. There’s an anti-oppression film here. A life-affirming film. A sports film. In fact, several sports films. Peddi aces cricket, stumbles into wrestling and aces that, and eventually wanders into athletics and… well, you know. The film feels as though it were figuring itself out while ambling through its indulgent runtime. It’s like someone threw Pushpa, Bison, and Sarpatta into a mixie without closing the lid properly. The undercooked mixture splattered all over the kitchen, and whatever else happened to be lying around, seems to have been gathered up and served as this film.

And so, yes, there are moments that do shine briefly, a few of them particularly in the second half, where the film suddenly seems to remember that storytelling is kind of a serious thing. The cricket-to-wrestling transition shots are cool. The choreography of the wrestling sequences feels painstakingly designed. Ram Charan’s physicality is impressive. There’s even a dialogue where Peddi equates sport with war, and in these moments, you see the film Peddi could have been if it had cared more, if it had trusted us more instead of having Boman Irani pound us with exaggerated expressions of admiration. At one point, I actually laughed. 

Still, nothing in Peddi is funnier than the archaic, dead idea it uses to spark romance between Achiamma and Peddi. A local politician, Ram Bujji (Divyenndu), attempts to publicly strip Achiamma and have videos taken of her. Naturally, King Peddi swoops in and throws a tent around her to protect her. Heroic? Perhaps. Except this is also the same Peddi who had earlier forced himself on her.

And that’s why, walking out of the theatre, I wondered whether Ram Bujji could have borrowed the film’s own defence of Peddi. Could he not, just like Peddi, have said: “Sorry, but the only way I know to show love is by stripping a girl in public and filming it.” If Peddi’s actions deserve a song and reciprocation from Achiamma, why not poor, abusive Ram Bujji?