Good Bad Ugly Is Parody Disguised As Fan Service

HERE'S A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT. Pick someone who is unaware of the beats of the hero worship and masala film in Indian cinema. Scratch that. Let’s pick Tamil cinema because the beast is almost unrecognisable at this point as the concept of stardom is nearing, if not an end, at least a lull. Ageing male stars fall back on their history, and idolising filmmakers lean on intertextuality to create hysterical theatrical moments. Show them Adhik Ravichandran’s new film with Ajith Kumar, Good Bad Ugly, and ask if there is any possibility that this is a spoof or a parody. They will most likely answer in the affirmative. To the innocent bystander, Good Bad Ugly comes across as a spoof, as if CS Amudhan made another Thamizh Padam (2010) solely focusing on Ajith and his career. The greatest trick Adhik ever pulled is convincing Ajith and maybe the audience that he is making a fan service film. What he’s really done instead is lampoon the star for two hours and twenty minutes. But again, it really depends on who you ask.

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Good Bad Ugly stars Ajith Kumar, Trisha, Arjun Das, Sunil, Prasanna, Prabhu, Jackie Shroff, with cameos by Tinnu Anand, Shine Tom Chacko, Raghu Ram, Usha Uthup, Simran, Yogi Babu and Rahul Dev. It doesn’t have a script. It has actors who are uncharacteristically energetic, as if a substance forcefully entered their veins. A kind of energy that makes sense for Jackie Shroff, Shine Tom Chacko, Raghu Ram, but comically out of place for Ajith, Trisha, Prabhu, Prasanna and Tinnu Anand. Arjun Das, I suspect, is aware that he is in a parody so that helps his performance to an extent. Oh, I forgot to mention other characters. There is Dheena, Billa, Vinayak and more as Ajith plays AK, as in himself, and appears as the character embodying all his past. Everyone gets references—Prasanna name drops Sneha, Redin Kingsley gets a self-referential dialogue among other abominations like cross dressing (standard crass gaze that Adhik has in all his films), Yogi Babu plays himself, Trisha and Simran get callbacks to their films and roles, and even Arjun Das receives a compliment about his voice. There is no writing of any kind in this film. A scene in Good Bad Ugly doesn’t follow the previous scene. It is a disjointed, clunky mess that is in the interest of pleasing the Ajith fan by placing an old song, an old dialogue or a terrible action sequence with or without slo-mo. Most of the time, as AK says in the film, it is the “all of the above” option.

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Even before the crazed fan could react to what’s happening on screen, Adhik places the fan stand-ins in the scene. So, Sunil’s Baby Tyson (do not ask!) screams “Red Dragon is Back!” as if we didn’t get that already. At least let the fan enjoy that moment? And later in another scene, when AK is leaving India for Spain, Prasanna’s Jaeger again helpfully looks at the camera and says, “He’s back!”. I understand MS Dhoni and Ajith share the Thala status, but when did they ever disappear to make multiple reentries? It is so clear that Adhik hated the recent crop of Ajith films. Several times in the film, people around AK exclaim that he’s back in his finest form, the kind that they all know and love.

Maybe they are happy today, it is all fun when the theatre is so noisy that you cannot make sense of what is happening in the film. Many years later, there is still a propelling force to Mankatha (2011) and its unapologetic protagonist. Many years later, there is still a novelty about Dheena (2001). A few months down the line, when we close the drapes and sit by ourselves to watch Good Bad Ugly, it will reveal its true self to us. A grand mess of a parody. A self-memeifying pop culture piece that is ripe for recontextualisation for every joke that is an excuse for a current affair. Look at that stretch where we witness a glimpse of AK’s past. We get the Billas and Dheenas, but we also get AK helping John Wick and The Professor from Money Heist on their escapades. If this is not a spoof, what is it? The problem with this is not the idea itself but the execution. A chase sequence with Darkkey’s cameo and song appears like an afterthought; we see more of Darkkey’s antics and less of the chase and fight. A magic show intervention in a gangster’s den is hilariously staged, everyone from Arjun Das to Jaeger to the foreign actors come across as cartoons more than gangsters. Even the bread-and-butter fight sequence in the first half is tuned to Ilamai Itho Itho, the full song blasting as if Lokesh Kanagaraj’s ghost entered Adhik’s body. More songs follow—Otha Ruba Tharen, Thottu Thottu Pesum, En Jodi Manja Kuruvi. Nothing in Good Bad Ugly is original, and more importantly, nothing truly feels sincere.

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This is the laziest way to make any film. And it is the worst possible way to treat both the star and his audience. Kids on Twitter and YouTube make better fan edits than Adhik has made a film. For some time now, this has been a pattern in Tamil commercial cinema to take the audience for granted. Just serve the dish hot and all spicy, and they will lap it up. Who cares about flavour? Who cares about taste? Good Bad Ugly is a film made for eight-year-olds by eight-year-olds. These are not serious people. God Bless Tamil cinema.