Body God movie review: Decent idea about keeping a corpse 'alive' falters with its cringe-worthy execution

2.5/5

Story: Vasu, a male nurse, from a lower-middle class background, dreams of a better tomorrow with a high-paying job in Dubai. But when the recruitment agent vanishes into thin air after taking Rs 3 lakh from Vasu – money that he took from a loan shark - for the process, he has to find a quick and well-paying job to tide him through. So, when the opportunity to look after a paraplegic comes, he takes it up. All’s well for a while, but then something happens that can hamper all of Vasu’s plans. Can he find a way out?

Review: Filmmaker Guruprasad, who plays one of the main roles in director Prabhu Srinivas’ Body God has spoken at multiple occasions about the fact that he is a corpse for most part of the film and that the reasons surrounding that forms the crux of the narrative. Indeed he does; but he begins as Puttanna, an insufferable paraplegic with quite the potty mouth, who is left in the care of a nurse by his wife Padma (Padmaja Rao), as she heads to the USA to assist with the pre and post-natal care of her daughter-in-law. Despite his tone that is almost offensively sarcastic, Puttanna has a friend in his neighbour Balu, who he calls LK Bal (that’s the level of humour in this film, by the way) and surprisingly strikes a fairly good rapport with his new nurse Vasu (Manoj) in quick time.

Vasu, a nurse from a lower-middle class family, has his share of responsibilities and has also just been swindled by a recruitment agent who’d promised him a high-paying job in Dubai. He’s got to pay off a loan that he’s taken from loan shark Seena (Prabhu Srinivas), among other things, so, the Rs 3,000 per day offering to take care off Puttanna comes as godsend to him. It doesn’t take Vasu long to win over Puttanna with his care and cooking skills and just as things started looking good for this odd-couple, Puttanna dies of natural causes. Still reeling under the weight of debt, Vasu, who is also quite the good mimic, decides not to let anyone know and keeps his client ‘alive’ for the rest of the world, while he uses his medical training to embalm the body and preserve it well in a refrigerator. What happens when Padma returns and finds her husband stuffed in the refrigerator forms the rest of the narrative.

For the most part, Body God revolves around Guruprasad and Manoj and therein lies the film’s strength and weakness. Guruprasad is in supreme form while his character is still alive and dead too, even though some of what he says and does can come across crass, like, for instance, the supposed sexual attack attempt of the house helper by dead Puttanna.

Manoj, well, what can I say about a man who has, say, a sum total of two expressions and is the weakest link of this film? I am baffled why Prabhu would entrust such an important character to Manoj.

This is also a film that was made with severe budgetary constraints, one would think. During his stint as nurse in a hospital, Manoj’s outfit looked like the production team had borrowed an ambulance driver’s whites. I don’t think I have ever seen a more shabbily kitted out nurse. They also convinced Padmaja Rao to let them use her beautiful house as a shooting location. If you haven’t yet seen the videos of her giving tours of her home on YouTube, here it is her and Guruprasad’s home.

Body God has a run-time of just under two hours, so Prabhu has actually tried to keep the narrative as crisp and tight as possible, but it could have been a lot shorter if he’d been more liberal in editing out his own scenes, which are meant to be funny, but don’t evoke much laughter. Quite cringy, actually.

Verdict: This week, there are apparently six new Kannada films in theatres, and while writing this, I have only seen two. I am not sure whether to recommend this for a theatrical outing, but it is the better of the two so far. That, by no means, is me saying rush to the nearest hall playing this film. This is a film that would have been a lot better with a more carefully-chosen cast and due diligence on the editing table. You can safely wait for it to drop on TV or OTT.

PS: Prabhu makes a big deal of a nurse's willingness to wipe a patient's bottom. Well, here's the thing, if you check out healthcare in the western world you will realize that it is part and parcel of their defined duties. India is among the few countries were a bystander (ideally a family member) is a must for every patient to take care of such jobs.