 Take this off will be like... Twinsies. Hans and... Hans and Frans. Frans. We're here to pump you up. In the most non-pump-up tone. Like if they were just monotone... Idiots. Welcome back to our stupid reactions, of course. I'm Rick. It's here on Twitter! Nope. I know who Nick Offerman is. I know who Nick Offerman is. He's on the back that said there's nothing... There has never been a sadness that can't be cured by breakfast food. He's Mr. Debra Messing. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Hey, welcome back. This is the stupid reactions, idiots. How you doing? Good? Good. Glad to hear it. Welcome to Classic Month. Well, I guess we're right in the thick of Classic Month. We're in the meat of it. This is our... The taint of it. Is that the meat? I don't think the taint is the meat. I'm gonna be honest with you. It's the nerve. A lot of nerves in your... Anyway, today it's our third Classic of the Month. Not our third Classic overall. We've seen quite a few Classic now. Quite a few Classic. But our second Telugu, because I think we had the musical one last time. Don't worry, the guy was the musician, correct? Right. And then now we just reviewed the 1950s... Sorry. Yeah, so obviously you saw the title, idiots. Yeah. The 1957 film, Maya Barza. Maya Barza. Maya Barza. Which I've seen it all together and then I've also seen it like Maya Barza. Right. Like separated. I don't know which one it is. But it's a 1957 comedy drama film. I don't know what the oldest Classic is, but it's probably around this time. Yeah. That we've seen probably, right? I think so. 50s. 50s. I can't... Who wasn't older than that, right? No. Well, it was 50s. Who was the 50? Oh, who was the 50s. Oh, who? Really? I think so. Anyways. Maybe 61. Directed by, you want to say his name for him, please? Yeah. Directed by... Sorry. I don't know what's going on here. KV, but also the full name is Kadrivenkata Ready. Also known as KV Ready. People call him KV Ready? Yeah, KV Ready. And then starring... A lot of people. A gamut of people. But NTR. Rao. SV. Rao. Rao. And then... Say her name. Savitri. Savitri, who I know is a big, big star of the time in cinema. But, obviously, it's a 100-minute spoiler view. It came in 1957. If you haven't seen it, go watch it. Go watch it. Unless you want to be spoiled. But I guess the synopsis here is... I don't know how to pronounce that. Promise it. Say it. Balorama promises Subhadra to get his daughter married to her son. But when the Pandavas loses their kingdom to the Kauravas, Balorama breaks his promise. Yeah. Drake, your initial thoughts, please. Have a paragraph. Okay. Did you really think that a three-hour Indian 1957 colorized Telugu language motion picture adaptation of a folktale that is based on the epic Mahabharata would not only entertain but impress this 21st century American dude? Well, you were right. From start to finish, I simply could not stop smiling and oftentimes shaking my head at the absolute brilliant and elevated artistry of the cinematic masterpiece that felt like the Marvel film of its time. Aptly called the market of illusions. It truly is that because director K.V. Reddy and team incorporate pretty much every possible visual effect and magic trick known to man at this time and sometimes do so with Oscar-level excellence. Anybody who loves moviemaking, especially the history of visual effects should add this movie to their all-time favorite list. But you hate Telugu films. Yeah. Apparently. A brand is going to be thrown off. I know. What can I tell you? We're supposed to only like Bollywood films. Yeah, I know. That's the rumor on the streets. Just like messing with idiots. I enjoyed this film as well. This is a, and I totally agree, it almost felt, obviously nothing like the film that I'm about to say, but of the time like a Wizard of Oz experience. Yeah. Of all the kind of magic tricks that kind of went on. And it's kind of strange because this is a story that obviously Indians and especially probably Hindus are going to be able to relate to billion times more. It was almost a history, like not a history lesson, but almost like an educational lesson a little bit. It felt like as well. Because obviously outside of what we've heard about, you know, in films or just obviously we're probably most known of Krishna. But like all these other people that are related to her. Right. Who their mothers are. It was almost, it felt a little like I was playing catch up at times. I was like, okay. Who's going on here? Yeah. Who's the relationship to you? You made it a point to not freak out over trying to follow the story. Yeah. It got easier as it went on. And I could catch up and go, oh now that makes sense. But it felt like if like obviously we knew who these people were already that we could have enjoyed this probably even more. Because we, I wouldn't have had to, even though I did enjoy this film. But like you probably already knew who obviously this God was or this Avatar was and knew their personality traits and knew what to expect. And you're like, oh, this guy's going to be a lot of fun. Right. Where I was like, okay. This is, this is that, that's him. But as it went on, I felt like it did a really good job of not only pacing a three hour film. Right. But it gave you enough of kind of a three hours. Yeah. Yeah. Almost the same kind of a Mughalizam spectacle of it with the grandeur of the sets. Yeah. And, and, and all that. And then also on top of that, a lot of the technical side of this film that it's just for the time. It's one of the reasons you love watching some classics because it was literally movie magic back in the day. Yeah. Now it's all amazing CGI and it's incredible. But they had to do practical things that had just hadn't been done. They had to think of creative ways to do it. And this film kind of just delivered on all those, right? On all of it. I just kept shaking my head at the greatness of and the amount of visual effects and practical effects that were in this thing. Just you name it. Go down the list of all of the potential things that could have been done at the time. Miniatures, map painting, physical effects, stop motion, split screen. They did everything. Yeah. Non-stop. Yeah. I just, it's just, it just, and sometimes like The Wizard of Oz, there's some visual effects that still work actually for The Wizard of Oz. And there were some visual effects here that like when the fire came that was an illusionary fire. I was wondering how they did it. Me too. I thought, how the heck did you guys do it? My guess is they obviously put it over the other film. It was an overlap. Exactly. It was a two-segment film that was overlapped but it was seamless. It was so good. Yeah. That, yeah, I just, and I agree. I think there's people in India who know this epic, this poem. This tale. This tale. Or know about the gods. They know it. That like when he brings out his arrow to shoot it and the other guy, when they're having that fight and he's throwing his scepter, I believe it is, forgive me if that's the wrong word. You know what to expect in the way that modern-day people know that when Thor grabs his hammer, it'll happen. And I felt a lot of people and I just, I just couldn't, there is a special endearing quality to the humor, the goofball-ness of it. Yeah, especially the second half when they got to the fake wedding. Yeah, with two goofy guys. With two goofy guys and then him playing, yeah, being her. Savvitri's character, or Sasi, right? Yeah, him being her was great. I thought she did a great job in pretending to be him. There had to have been some jump scares in the theater in the day when the face transformations take place into the lion and into the monkey because that was full close-up on the screen jump. It had to have been a lot of fun. People must have been leaving the theater telling everybody you've got to go see this movie. Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, probably my favorite part even though I enjoyed the entire thing for the spectacle, I think it really came into, especially the comedy aspect. Yeah, in the second part when he, I forget the God to I can't pronounce We can't pronounce him. And I apologize, but the one that was in the big second half which was still great in the film. Still great. I still enjoyed that. Still fun to watch. The food part in the second half. But the comedy that was basically non-stop after they kind of went to do the wedding part was, I thought it really stuck and it was a lot of physical comedy. It was a lot of stuff that it's not like they're speaking a different dialect that we've talked about that we can't understand. It was just, I thought it was a really well filmed really well written for all the comedy to come through. I thought a lot of the weird quirky characters like the doof prince. I thought it was funny. I thought he was just like an idiot. Yup. And I like that aspect to it. I like the God, I wish I knew his name. The God. Right. That one. I'm going to call him. I don't know. Which he's actually, I think, forgive me if I'm wrong, but I remember reading up on it that he was a demon because when he's showing up, like when the foot is her foot but it's really his foot, it's covered in hair and the hand is covered in hair and that was supposed to signify demon. The hairy hand and the hairy foot was a demon. Yeah. Yeah. And I think they've said it a few times. And also, even though I thought they had a great colorized version in this film, which was apparently it's like 50th anniversary that they decided to spend like $2 million and kind of restore it and colorize it. We'll talk about that in a second. Yeah. But I thought they did a good job but there were some aspects on the site that we were watching it on that it's sometimes, I don't know what happened to you, the subs just didn't show up. Yeah. Sometimes the subs just faded out. And it was only a few times but it just, a couple of times it just, nope, there's no subs. No subs at all. But yeah, I enjoyed that. I enjoyed all the songs. Me too. I thought they were all, the grandeur of them was incredibly beautiful. They were very different. Yeah. Some were really quirky, silly, some were really grand and beautiful. I liked the whole, the three songs that on the boat. Yeah. The first two are on the boat and then the Krishna and I think his wife, was it his wife? I think so, yeah. We're on the boat and then the third one was like, and they all kind of sang the same recitation of the songs but the way they filmed the sky and the moon and I think a lot of them from what I read were actually day shots. Oh, okay. But they made it, kind of nighttime. Yeah. Which I thought was great and just, the whole, it was similar but very different to like Mughal Islam in terms of just the grandeur of it all, the beauty of it all, I think Indian films of this type benefit from colorization of the time because of how colorful the places, palaces were, the clothes are and so I think it's a great thing that they've decided to restore some of this. I agree and I was never a fan for many, many years of colorization. Different here though. And it's because it's different here and part of the reason it's different here is because I don't think we care enough and it shows in the work the amount of work that went into the colorization and the amount of money that went into the colorization and I know from stuff I read about this that to get the flesh tones they needed to get something like 35,000 different kinds of shadings that they blended into everything in order for it to actually look like a skin tone and the same thing on each of the individual petals on the flowers Turner Network didn't do that. They said, oh flesh tone all humans have that flesh tone and it shows the lack of care makes the colorized versions an annoyance whereas anything we've seen now when it's colorized I feel the love that went into restoring this and wanting you to capture what it originally was like on set and I felt they did equally as well in sound restoration the sound restoration of the songs and they actually not only restored sound they actually took the time to take like 16 instruments and re-record over the original track some live instrumentation to embellish that sense of the full orchestra because so much of it gets lost in degenerative sound especially back in the day when it was not you know it wasn't Dolby Sound that they were recording with so this is probably for me of a film that had sound restoration without question the best sound restoration I've heard of a classic film it was incredible and I thought all the performances did really well there was nothing that stuck out for me kind of like outside of she her I thought she did a really good job especially when it came to impersonating that other guy I thought that was she did a really good job of switching it up but this wasn't really a performance driven thing more of like the story driven and some of the actors story and stylized yeah I felt more like some more than others yeah I felt more like we were sitting in the dirt somewhere and the outskirts people were telling a play almost yeah we were watching these people do this hyper stylized play so all of the hyper stylized moments for me were just endearing I just couldn't stop smiling watching what I felt that was the other thing that I felt every frame of this not just I'm not talking about restoration which we were just talking about but throughout this one of the reasons I kept smiling was I felt like every single actor and every single person involved with this was just they were doing this because they love making movies I mean like and how long did it make them to take how long did it take them to make this film do you know I think it was at least a year from concept to finish that's fast I thought it was going to be longer than that yeah I thought it was a year for them to completely do it and that's with not just the two different languages but they had sometimes different actors for the roles because some of them didn't speak Telugu or Tamil but I just I thought I bet if you spoke to every single person who was in this they were doing it for the love of movie making and it just exudes out of every single person on the screen at every moment and I I do know that the forgive us for not knowing all of their names he was very concerned first and didn't feel like he would do an adequate job of portraying Krishna and ironically he was so well received that I think he did like 30 more roles as Krishna because he was so beloved as portraying Krishna which is that's great that's you got to feel as an Indian I would have trepidation if I was an Indian knowing about Krishna it's probably the same way this will probably felt portraying Jesus in the passion of the Christ it's like this is a character where people are going to come at me with some pretty serious understandably critical eyes and he apparently was beloved in this role yeah I thought he did well I did too it's the first time outside of Akshay in OMG playing I think he was playing Krishna yeah and we've seen some smaller comedic things that was more comedic like in PK that guy was dressed as Krishna full fledged where they were the characters yeah like this is like this is a full on the gods are part of the world yeah and this is their story of their relationships right their wives or their daughters we've seen representational things of it and like interpretations but not direct a full film that's their story that's what I was I was also concerned before I started I was like am I going to be able to get yeah on and so I was concerned but I think it was kind of just they were characters that happened to be gods and this was kind of a family story almost I knew there'd be no way I could begin to comprehend what I was seeing in terms of the story it would be thousand things that went over yeah it would be like someone who has never been introduced to the Old Testament watching the Ten Commandments and trying to wrap their head around the history of the children of Israel and all of that and just enjoy this film just enjoy the epic and that's how I felt this was way over my head oh yeah in terms of the source material but I thought they did a good job even though this film was made for Indians yeah thousand percent made for Indians but I thought it's an easily understandable story because it's essentially just a normal kind of outside of obviously the arranged marriage and stuff all that kind of stuff but it's a family story daughters, mothers, dads with kings but and I as much as it truly is it's an Indian film for Indian people I I love this film in ways that some of the other classics because people I think people would expect us when we refer to people I mean Americans for example people in the West if we refer to them to a classic if we were to mention something that comes from Bollywood it would be anticipated and expected I love the fact that this isn't a Bollywood film that you can do and say look guys even as far back as 1957 we here should have been paying closer attention to what was going on outside of America because we had no idea that films this good were being made in this region of this country at this time at this level it just it undergirds everything we've ever cared about on the channel about y'all need to know about what's going on in India because too often relegated to just the Bollywood cheese when some of the most important contributions to this art form have been happening for the better part of 60, 70, 80 years now and we didn't talk about it but you like the the two really corky guys love them there was almost like a very pedosan yeah yeah absolutely those were like the big over the top guys even when they're watching like the silliness of them watching them like snacks and they're all just sitting there going yeah it was very of the time but we've said it all the time obviously you don't you don't judge films from 1957 the way you judge them now no based on them their time their time and what was going on at that time and it's almost you get to take a lot of your critic hat off almost that's what a lot of movies eat not fully obviously you're gonna have critiques of old films and we have people enjoy some like you are others but I feel like you get to take your critics hat off a little bit especially with something of this old me like I just want to enjoy this film yeah and I think most would as long as you're not trying to like unless you're Indian and you can't fully understand obviously their relationships but even if you're an American you can just enjoy the grandeur the pictures the set design the songs of course you can enjoy the humor you can enjoy there at the end the visual effect if you love moviemaking arrow I just if you love moviemaking it may not float your bow it may not be your kind of film but there were moments where maybe I wasn't tracking with the story and the acting is stylized so I'm not gonna be empathetic to what this experience is it's not that I could I could literally just watch this thing for the full three hours just to relish in the love of moviemaking and how much work went into entertaining people it's just I think it's a beautiful movie yeah I do as well I'm so glad we're three for three currently really great classic month all very different as well yeah I'll tell you what mark my words cause I'm keeping a track I'm keeping the list this is one of those movies that's gonna be tough when it comes down to the dummies for next year because you're gonna have a conversation about visual effects and I promise you something like R.R. is gonna get nominated but it's gonna be up against this for the special effects of its day yeah that would be tough right it's gonna happen I promise this will be nominated for visual effects by me for sure and production and production design production design and production design and maybe even direction we'll see yeah yeah this is a really good one great movie let us know what other telugu films we should watch including classics and what should be our next classic as a whole that we should watch down down