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Telugu film director S S Rajamouli's Bahubali, a two-part mythological saga about a son avenging his father's death, has been hailed as a cinematic masterpiece by both international and Indian film media.
It's a first for a Telugu movie to be dubbed in multiple Indian languages as well as for Karan Johar's Dharma Productions to acquire its Hindi release rights.
Three days after the release, the box office collections are saying it loud and clear -- the hype is for real. Bahubali has become the biggest opener of 2015 in any Indian language, taking in Rs 50 crore on the first day of its release. It is also the top South Indian opener of all time.
The Prabhas Raju and Rana Daggubati-starrer left Guardian's Mike McCahill so wowed that he wrote, "Wide-eyed and wondrous, Rajamouli's film could be a blockbuster reboot, or the first blockbuster ever made, a reinvigoration of archetypes that is always entertaining, and often thrilling."
His four-star review also had a socio-economic angle to it, "The (film) set its producers back around $40 million: pocket change by Hollywood standards, a sign of how the movie world’s other half live. Yet for once with these lavish items, the budget isn’t the whole story: the impressive results only set one to wondering why the American studios don’t insist on getting more for their money."
On the BBC website, Sudha G Tilak said the movie has "successfully married the traditional Indian film template with state-of-the-art special effects".
It broke USA box office records by setting elevated standards for Indian movies in overseas markets. It was listed by Rentrak, the box office reporting tool, as one of the top-ten grosser of this week among theatrical releases.
The movie's first part, which revolves around a son getting to know about his father Amarendra Bahubali, who used to rule Mahishmati kingdom, and the tales of his valour. Comparisons to Lord of the Rings have been made based on the CGI ballast that was witnessed during a 40-minute epic battle between Bahubali's army and Kalakeya's army of demons.
Indian Express' Shubhra Gupta didn't hold herself back in her review of this movie. ""You can see S S Rajamouli's varied influences in places: James Cameron-like dreamy vistas of hill, waterfall and greenery, Ang Lee's flying-through-the-air-acrobatics, Peter Jackson's stretching-out-for-miles crowded battlefields, J R R Tolkien's plug-ugly trolls who talk in guttural tongues," she wrote.
CNN-IBN's Rajeev Masand was in raptures as well. "Spanning generations, going back and forth between the present and the past, alternating between vastly contrasting landscapes, it's an ambitious work from a visionary filmmaker who skilfully blends a tale of old school palace politics with modern VFX (visual effects) to deliver a consistently watchable blockbuster," he wrote.
The second part of the movie is slated for a January 2016 release.
