I just realized, I didn’t get a RSVPs for this one! So if Genevieve shows up, awesome, we watch. If no one shows up, after 15 minutes I stop. But I am pretty sure Genevieve will show up 🙂
Parugu
It’s on Netflix, it’s light, it’s fun, it’s interesting, and it’s Genevieve’s favorite movie. Let’s watch!
at 7am Chicago time I will put up an “And Play” comment and we will all comment along from there!
dontcallitbollywood 
I love his friend’s self talk, about how he will loose some weight and get a girl with a nice dowry.
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There’s a couple of movies that do the “sister elope” storyline in a way I find believable. Saathiya/Alai Payuthay, where she hasn’t even finished med school yet, and spits in the face of the sacrifices her family made for her tuition. Including her older sister.
And Humpty Sharma, where it’s not “shame” but fear of a disaster after a love marriage where the family can’t protect you.
And Socha Na Tha, where the divorce brought such misery on the whole family that the heroine doesn’t want to do anything to make them sad.
But I guess in all of those, it works because it’s not “honor” or “shame” or anything external, but rather the internal family hurts.
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But clearly when people are willing to KILL the perpetrators of such action the shame is real.
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Oh yeah! All the examples I gave are ones where I can understand the family’s anger and conflicted feelings, and how it could affect the other sister’s relationships. But they aren’t, like, violent about it!
And really all of those situations are ones that could just as easily arrive in any society. A sibling having a disastrous marriage is gonna make you love and commitment phobic. And make your parents EXTRA Protective.
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Also, just occured to me that with all the realism in this movie, we are never shown how the guys are expected to go to the bathroom in the shed.
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The anklet of destiny…
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I’m starting to understand the the harshness and cruelty in this film that so bother people are why I like it. In the midst of this horror there is love and humor.
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And the horror goes away if you just aren’t afraid of it. Like our hero. He has figured out that it is very unlikely they will actually be killed, they just have to make the best of it. So he takes life as it comes and makes the best of it.
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A little of this reminds me a bit of Chennai Express? Coz at the core of it these are people who will kidnap and force Meena into marriage and SRK is kidnapped and covered in blood by the end of the film too…but it’s largely a comedy-romance.
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Yes!!!! And also the contrast of the urban hero coming into this village craziness.
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In the love song he dreams of her with a purple sari and that makes me so happy 😁😁😁
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Are you a fan of purple sari’s?
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I’m a fan of purple anything! 💜 You could dress someone up in a purple sack and I would probably love that too.
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Also love that the servant friend analyses, correctly the actions of her employer family, out loud. I appreciate that though young and naive is shown as perhaps smarter than her employer.
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I HATE this song. The choreography sucks, and it is weird. Though Petra is cool.
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And Allu gets to experiment with his hair, which of course he likes.
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THe wig is SO BAD.
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Interesting. So now she has the power to make decisions about what to do in this situation. I’ve seen this same flip in a few southern movies, and I love it. It may start with the hero falling in love and stalking and so on. But the plot arranges to give the heroine a way to get to know him and decide if she’s gonna let this love story happen.
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True, but the power is so momentary. The truth is, in her family, she is essentially powerless. In her village she is powerless. And now with this terrible dance dream she is partially realizing it. Her idea that a man can force her to fall in love isn’t that far off from her father forcing her to marry and everyone basically forcing her to do everything.
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He bad dream forced her to fall off her bed on top of her servant. At first I was HORRIFIED by the realization that her servant basically slept at the foot of her bed (JUST like in the 1600s!). But then, remembering my past work with at risk families and the extremem separation between the sexes in the village, I thought that that giant house was a sexual abuse disaster waiting to happen, and that their sleeping in the same room was perhaps a protection for both of them.
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Oh, absolutely!!!! And probably her sister slept in the bed with her before she ran away. Plus, in a village almost everyone would be sleeping on pads on the floor, having that huge bed frame would be the unusual thing.
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Okay, if I’m following this, the couple eloped to the home of a married friend in the city. And Arjun wasn’t involved in their elopement, but turns out he helped the married friend elope, so he is pro-elopement. And this whole time he’s just been pretending to the village people that he was cool with helping them?
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AA really does seem like a hero, enduring all that and not telling anyone where they were, and being able to keep up with the bus for so long. ANd they were not the first couple he helped elope. He is a romantic at heart, even if he is immature.
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Wait, so he did help them elope? I thought he just helped once he found out.
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He totally helped them, and was supposed to help them more but then her family kidnapped him.
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Krishna is searching for her now and this feels like Cinderella without the glass slipper
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It is! except that prince charming is trapped in a shed with dirty clothes.
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His speech about who is not selfish is dead on.
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And a great response to anyone who may complain that our heroine is shallow, after seeing how he was trying to support her sister. Why shouldn’t she be selfish like everyone else?
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But her realizing what he was actually doing and hearing him call her selfish made her realize she was. Growth.
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THe man is afraid to come up to AA, because they all know he can fight back. But then AA gets all googly eyed realizing she is the girl he was looking for. Joy in the midst of total terror.
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ANd AA is definitely in the look trying to do EXACTLY what she is scared of, make her fall in love with him by looking into his eyes.
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YES!!!! And she must have realized how inevitable it is already, which is why she’s avoiding looking. His crazy love story, his support of her sister, she just had to see him for her to fall in love.
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I love that Prakesh is smart enough to understand that hurting AA won’t get him anything, but hurting his friends will force him to spill the beans.
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Just like in Jawan!!!!
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It is a hero’s weakness.
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And her love starts, with the servant telling her that when they find her sister they won’t see eachother any more, her reaction is not happiness. He is such the hero, such the leader, loving her despite her selfishness, how could she not love him back?
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Ok I love the symbolism of seeing her again in the mist. And that too at a time when she’s just finished praying that she finds AA’s lady love soon!!
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Oooo, new outfit! Thank goodness for the love songs so he gets a chance to change clothes.
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Yes, he can finally be stylish by wearing a shirt that is pretending to be two.
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This song has the joyous beat of the Hyderabad entrance song, so it is appropriate that they are heading back to that city. Also, in this song, unlike in his fantasy of her, she actually looks like she likes him (towards the end of the song).
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ACtually so much happens in this song, so much about their relationship. I love it with Indian films use songs like this, to further to plot of the movie. It is the bEST use of music and dancing! But the first song is still my favorite.
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KRISHNA. At least attempt to look at the girl’s face!!
Ok…after two mins she finds out anyway that she was AA’s dream girl!
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In hindsight it’s good that she knows first and he doesn’t, coz that gives her time to process the fact that she’s the one he’s looking for.
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That was pretty silly, his not even looking. But it makes for dream song visit to Petra.
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AA’s getup in that song took a little getting used to, but the locales at Petra are lovely 🤩
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I’m never quite sure of the relationship between this guy housing them and the family.
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Oh shoot, I was gonna ask you!
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Based on the Gopi/Topi interaction I’m going to imagine he was a realtive from the village who made good in Hyderabad and alwasy felt he wasn’t respected within the family.
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I think this is a reform temple? Thus all the eloping couples and the villagers feeling uncomfortable? Lisa? Arya Samaj?
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I had no idea! Ah, so nice to learn something new! So if I am guess a reform temple doesn’t exclude based on caste?
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Yes, both the caste in terms of higher lower, and in terms of “this community can’t marry that community because they are different communities”.
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Like Johnny Lever I feel like I can’t see a Telugu film without this guy in it.
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Ooooh I’m now at the part where everyone is searching for the couple in Vizag!
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AA is such the HERO is these scenes. Everyone must fall in love with him.
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Love the way the exposition of how AA was involved in their elopement was done! It gives us all the details, but in a way that sounds organic, like a guy in a desparate hurry to let his friends escape.
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And it really makes you rethink EVERYTHING you thought about his character till that point!
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His extremem selfishness becomes raw courage.
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Prakesh is such a dynamic but ugly man.
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In Iruvar he gets to play multiple love scenes, and it’s so good.
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My mother and her friends claim that he was good looking for a space of 2 years when he did his debut in a Kannada serial ‘Guddada Bhoota’. His real name is Prakash Rai (yes like Aishwarya Rai, as they come from the same caste)
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I am so sorry, I’m missing this! I will watch it when I get a chance and catch up on comments!
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Seeing such a hero, like AA, struggle to even get a chance to talk to the girl he “loves” who doesn’t love him back is, fantastic.
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At first I thought this idea that there are threats to a woman everywhere was unrealistic. I was happier when I thought it was unrealistic.
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Flipside, they are more in danger if they are sheltered like Meena was. Which AA knows, she is so clearly a village girl who doesn’t know how to protect himself.
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I’m at the selfishness dialogue now and it was as amazing as all you’d said!!
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I also love how that completely changes HER too! The transformation was quick, but it worked with her character and with the circumstances
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Gotta love a Tollywood fight scene!
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cement is styrofoam in compared to the strength of love
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So true.
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AA’s flip out here is totally understandable. She doesn’t deserve it, but at the same time, there is no way he could do all that and then act the perfect gentleman, he is a hero, but imperfect, still a human.
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Hothead friend that they kidnapped gets them all kicked out of the house. Kinda serves them right for kidnapping people.
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BROTHER IN LAW – his wife must be Prakesh’s sister! And perhaps he never felt accepted, thus resentment, and he kicks them out onto the street.
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Very big fish in a little pond goes to a bigger pond feeling! He doesn’t know how to protect his daughter, his friend has more power than he does, and so on. And now suddenly Arjun gets to be generous to him.
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AND now PRAKESH see’s the results of his selfishness, kidnapping people and creating fear among their families.
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I was wrong, once he goes homeAA does get a change of clothes. ALSO LOVE that he gets chained to a tree! Love his relationship with his mother. Love her. Love him. Their family is so much better than hers.
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Agree with Gen, the relationship between Meena and the house help is really interesting.
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I should say as an AMerican the idea that someone so young would be forced to be a servant is abhorant, and clearly neither of these girls is going to to school, though with notebooks mentioned Meena could have been going to school earlier. And yet despite this, the servant is never portrayed as stupid or somehow deserving of her lower status, she simply is.
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I think Meena’s first scene she is complaining about not being allowed to go to college after her sister eloped. So she was going to college and learning stuff and so on, until this all happened.
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Pretty sure the love song playing as Meena travels with Prakashraj and AA and friends are is from Meena’s PoV.
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Also like how the song shows how torn she is between her new feelings for AA and her loyalty and love for her dad
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There is no way after that speech not to fall in love! NO WAY! AA’s look at the camera is so entrancing. Oh, to be near that charm.
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I see this song as an extension of the one where he is wearing one shirt designed to look like two.
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LOVE his mother, love her. She is also such a presence on film, in a Kajol-like way.
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Benefit of having a name like Krishna – people can always switch to pretending they’re chanting the name of gods 😂
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I finished a book last night, Accidentally Engaged by Farah Heron, where the protagonist STOPS drinking when her life hits rock bottom, it was refeshing.
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Prakesh, from my perspective, is totally wrong to force his daughter to marry someone she doesn’t want to marry, to kidnap the friends of the man she ran off with, to perhaps kill her. ANd yet with this scene, you see how he feels he was a loving dad, how he does love his daughter. The love is there, and it is totally twisted. Twisted by the world and expectations, but still there.
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I will say the Tiger version, which also had Prakesh, pointed out this twistedness more obviously, which is perhaps better.
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This is why I like the Tiger movie better! I felt like Prakash was pardoned and he was sort of good in this film. The Tiger movie also has the Pappi song and Whistle Baja
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But it didn’t have Allu Arjun. ANd while I like Tiger, and Tiger can dance, he doesn’t hold a candle to AA’s charm. Also, he didn’t play the character with a lot of depth or growth.
Oh, and how they portrayed the servant was gross.
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I have a soft spot for Tiger. However I think I just watched Heropanti first when I was much younger so my mind is always partial to that. There is something very lighthearted about this. I don’t remember the servant so that proves your point
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And Kriti is so gorgeous falling in love with her at first sight makes a lot more sense than doing the same with Parugu’s heroine. Also I really liked one of the “evil” bumbling uncle in Heropanti. Heropanti is a good movie, and I saw it before I saw Parugu. I don’t think I saw Parugu until 2020.
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I really liked Kriti in Heropanti. She is so lively and I don’t know I really enjoyed her presence compared to Paragu’s heroine. I wonder have you seen Maine Pyaar Kiya. It doesn’t have a servant-master relationship more of a Krishna – Sudama story except Krishna betrays Sudama. There is also this book called What’s good about Falling? by Prajwal Hegde which is sort of servant-master relationship. Its about a cricketer and tennis player falling in love except the cricketer is from the driver of the tennis player’s house family. So its all about class relationships.
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The Arya Samaj is where you can get Vegic marriages done, esp for intercaste couples
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That’s probably why it’s the first open they go for to search. Tho why they’d be there almost a month after they eloped is anyone’s guess
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Sigh. This gets back to the main blind spot I see in so many films. If she’s in love, and you don’t want her to get married to someone who can’t support her or take care of her, then just WAIT!!!! Give it a few years and she can marry her boyfriend once he finishes college and has a job. It’s not like the world will end if she isn’t married to SOMEONE before she’s 22.
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I love how chasing after the van brings the great village presence, Prakesh, into a practical fool. He almost kills himself to find her, to do what? To kill her? His authority is so diminished.
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