 Hello! Luther! Behold the eye of the dragon! The dragon egg. Ah, Nadl Nathrach. Uth vas betod doch el cien ve. I don't speak Spanish. It's from Excalibur. You never saw that movie, did you? It's an oldie but a goodie. I saw the animated Excalibur. Hey, we'll go back to our stupid wreck. She had some Corbin. We stayed at the Excalibur for our honeymoon. I'm sorry. No, we had a good time. Yeah. I haven't been there in years, but when I went it wasn't good. No, it was okay. This was in the late 90s. You get what you pay for. Y'all say this about the Excalibur, you get what you pay for. It's been 20 years. When you go to the Excalibur, you get what you pay for. And it's economic, so you're not going to get a lot of bells and whistles. But also, when you're in Vegas, you don't often stay in your hotel. And that's why we went to the Excalibur. Just for any of you who've never been to Vegas. You don't often stay in your hotel except at night. No, find a place to just be comfortably resting and clean and then go spend your money on shows and gambling and drinks because we're Bollywood Boot Lickers. That's what I'm talking about. Have I said, hey, welcome back? Yeah, we just did that. Okay, well, forget it. We're doing a movie review. We're not licking Bollywood Boots today. No, no, not Bollywood Boots. Nope. This is Telugu Boots today, but a Bollywood... I think he's an Indian star. I don't even think he's... He's not one particular region because he's... I mean, this is our first Telugu film of his. Oh, is it really? I didn't realize that. To my knowledge, because we've seen Tamil and Bollywood. I think he's predominantly a Tamil actor. Let me know if I'm wrong, but I think this is the first... Yeah, no, he's of his. He's an Indian star. He's an Indian legend. Yeah. A lot of Indian cinema. A lot of stars in India are regional. He is... They cross the region. Yeah, even in... Obviously, Shahrukh Khan, even though he's beloved, he's still mostly a Hindi... I mean, he's beloved around the world, but he's a Hindi star. Hindi star. Right. Come on, San. I mean, yeah, I guess if you do it all, you might not do it all. Yeah. Anyways, we are reviewing the 1983 film... Sagara Sagamama. You know what? Sagamama. Sagamama. Sagamama. Sagamama. Yeah. This is the movie we're going to review. Sagara Sagamama. Sagara Sagamama. It's this lady, she's very, very saggy, and she loves cigars. So we call her... Sagamama. Sagamama. Welcome to our Stupid Reaction. Yeah. I love that they split it up, because it's not split up like that. The title. In the title, it's one word. Yeah. Like most South Indian words that are long that only they can pronounce, and I sound like a buffoon trying to. But it's a 1983 film directed by K Viswanath, who we've seen one other of his films. And if you knew that... Nope. That's not... It's read about either. What was the other one we saw of his? The classic Telugu about the classic artist. Mahanlal? No. No. That's Malialam. It's... The green phase thing? No, no, no, no. Not a dancer. He's a singer. The classic film. We did it first classic month. It's a classic Telugu film. The guy wants to be a singer. Hold on. I'll pull it up for you. All right. This one. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I thank you for putting that together for me. I wouldn't have remembered that. Yeah. That one was 1980. This is 1983. Same director. Got it. So that's the other time that we had seen it. Obviously starring Kamal Hassan. Yep. And Jaya Prada. Yep. And Saraswath Babu. Yep. Who are the mainly, obviously, Kamal Hassan's the star of this film. Composed by Raja Sir. And written by him and... Yeah. The story was by him. Dialogue was, I'll mispronounce. Forgive me. Jaundiala. Yeah. I want to... I think you know that on Twitter. But when we did our review of Shahid. Obviously, the Hansel retweeted it, right? And said, thank you so much, guys. But then the writer of the film, who we've had many of us writing before, said it's wonderful to see people talk about editing in a film, even if you don't talk about the writing. Because he was the writer of the film. I guess we kind of like... Didn't we say that the writing was... I don't think we shouted it out specifically. I think we said that. I don't think we like... Okay. Which I felt bad. I felt bad. We loved the writing in that movie. We loved pretty much everything about that movie. But I thought it was funny. Yeah. I try to shout out everybody I can. Because sometimes we lose track of what we talk about. Because we just... How we do reviews is we just talk about it. Just off the cuff. Others do it a different way. Totally fine. Yeah, there's some people who... I mean, there's some people who write out the reviews and they have a teleprompter style. Jimmy does that. Jimmy does that. Jimmy prepares it. Which is a fantastic reviewer. Fantastic reviewer. But anyways. There's a hundreds of them. We came out in 1983. If you haven't watched it. Where did I watch it? Oh, yeah. What did we watch that on? Oh, it might be available somewhere for you. Yeah. But it wasn't for us with subtitles. Right. So somebody actually sent us a link with the subtitles. So thank you so much. But I think it's available, like on YouTube. And I think it's available in other words. But it just doesn't have subs. So if you can speak the language. But I talked to them and said everybody has seen this film. Yeah. But thank you. My initial thoughts. And I have... I don't have the tracking numbers as far as what number film it is. I typically do that right at the beginning. And I don't have a paragraph. I will say you that as much as this was a mixed bag for me. I have things I can say about it that didn't engage me. And I have other parts that that did engage me. I'll tell you the things I liked the most that ultimately I liked it. I was hoping like most films when I watched them that I'm going to love the movie. I didn't love the movie. And ultimately I liked it. And again, when we get into the broader space of the things we talk about with the acting or the editing or the filming, I'll get into the specifics of what it was that I did like versus what I didn't like. And ultimately it led to me just liking it. I wouldn't necessarily watch it again or even recommend it. But ultimately a thumbs up in terms of I liked it. No, I liked it apparently a lot more than you. I like this film a lot. I think the first half is much better than the second half. I think it fell off a little bit in the second half. This is my favorite Kamal performance. Hands down. Wow. Hands down is my favorite Kamal Hassan performance. And he's had great performances, obviously. Outside of one that wasn't really his fault in the performance. No. It was the film that we just didn't enjoy at all. Exactly. Yeah. He's had many, many great performances. But yeah, I did enjoy this film quite, quite a bit. But I can see where you probably not be engaged in some aspects, especially in the second half. The second half wasn't as engaging for me as the first half. But overall, I really enjoyed this film. And once again, he enjoyed it as well. Just not as much. Well, I know what people just assume right off the bat. Rick didn't like it. If we say something, we didn't enjoy it as much. Right. Whenever I get into the critique aspect of it, I did say I liked it. But there's actually, it's interesting. There's the thing at the front and the thing at the back that are kind of good bookends. I loved at the very beginning the fact that the girl, the dancer and her husband were so vitriolic and ugly and hate-filled and threatening of physical harm to him simply because he gave him a bad review. Not relatable. Not at all. Not relatable at all, Rick. And I also had the thought that, you know, at the end, they said the thing of like the guru is like God and this is like God and like the guest is like God. God. And I consider us to be guests in your homes. And if that's the case, then a lot of the folks who say some of the things they say might want to reconsider the way you treat your guests. So Kamal Hassan, I'm actually surprised because comparatively I'll tell you the things that differentiate me. I mean, number one, I'm not saying he gave a bad performance. I enjoy watching him. He and her carry the film for me. I forget the name of the last one we saw that I loved so much. What was the last one we just saw? So many of the names off and I forget. It's the one where he had like the mutton chop. Yeah. Yeah. Part of the reason for me, I wouldn't consider this one, it's not even close to the top for me of his performances, setting the dancing aside. No way to tell. I actually, I asked Indrani, I said, is Kamal Hassan considered like a really good classical dancer? And she said, I don't know, I've never watched him enough. I haven't heard enough. And we don't know enough. We can hear singers and because we understand what goes into singing, we understand difficulty we hear with vocalization that lets us get awed by it. But with the disciplines of particular dance forms that you don't know, it's hard to tell how good the person is. It passed my eye test. I don't know shit, though. For me, I'm going to assume he nailed it and that he was doing it as good as it gets. Yeah. And that was my assumption straight up. Yeah. So setting that aside. I know nothing about dance. Yeah. It looked like he could have been exactly turned into it. It looked to me. But obviously he can't judge that part. Exactly. On its own. It looked to me. He was doing it right. Just like when Ren Vier does an accent. I can't really judge him because I don't know that accent at all. Exactly. Really well. Or even watching a... It just passes the ear test. Yeah. You can watch, like if you're watching a movie about cricket, if they don't hit the ball but the ball goes flying, that's obviously a bad editing choice or something. But I don't know the sport well enough to critique how believable the cricket playing was. So I'm assuming his dancing was spot on, so set that aside. There were things about his physical demise that weren't grounded for me. That was the one thing for me that pulled me away from the believability of his portrayal was there wasn't a flow through in terms of the descent and the symptomology of his problem. It just was oftentimes an indication of a stomach pain. And then I saw alterations in his level of sickness within seconds of each other. At one moment he looked like he was on death's door and then something else happened and he seemed completely revitalized. That for me was what pulled me from feeling like it was ultimately... And there was some choppiness in the editing, especially in the second half, that pulled me away from staying engaged with the characters. But I say all that not to say that I think he gave a bad performance. I just only equate it to the same level you do, if that makes sense. I can say I've seen it a lot now in Indian cinema. What they do with illnesses is strange in how people just die in the drop of a hat. Yeah, especially older films. And so on that aspect of the filmmaking, I agree, I kind of just talked about, this is just how I do it, I guess. People just fucking die. Which for me, I can't... She wrote out a note. Yeah, I do remember that. Yeah, and for me, it's unless it's a highly stylized form of theatrical art that specifically has that within the disciplines. Yeah, there was so much more, though, besides that. There was, but I look at the performance as a whole throughout the entirety of the nearly three-hour film. And those moments for me, I can't say it's one of his best performances. When those moments for me, I wouldn't want someone to watch as an example of good illness portrayal. Wouldn't that be more on the filmmaking than his performance? Because if that's what the director told him to do. Well, I'd love to hear his viewpoint on that in that regard. And I find it hard to believe, and I can be wrong, where he has an artistic choice that the director says, I want you to do this, and he deep down is like, that is completely antithetical to anything I want to do right now, but I'll do it because you're the director. That may have happened. And this is also early in his career. It was. With a well-known director. But irrespective of what led to the decision, the final result for me was seeing stuff in that physical portrayal that pulled me away from believing the performance in those moments. Only those moments, though. Yeah, no, this whole performance of his, I loved. Obviously, there's stuff with obviously time and how older films choose to do certain things that you just kind of have to forgive. But overall, his performance, I really, really enjoyed from... I love him with the beard, by the way. I think he looked absolutely fantastic. You would? Yeah, I would. That's true. But once again, please tell us if you're a dancer and he nailed... I'm assuming... It looked like he did. Knowing the man's level of discipline and desire for excellence, I can't imagine he wasn't nailing it. It looked like it to me. All those were very, very captivating. I loved the part at the end of the song that we had reacted to, where they're kind of on the mountain range. And then the applause. That's my favorite moment of the film. And then... Is that number and the applause at the end? I don't know if it was right after that or before. He goes to see, once again, his spoiler. His mom, right? Because she's dying. Right. And he did the performance for her. That's my second favorite moment. That was a fantastic whole portion of the film. I think they were all pretty substantial. And it was another great performance, but also pretty emotional because you saw it on Kamal's face. So that whole... I think I texted the group right after that. I loved that scene of him. Those are my two favorite moments. And obviously, he's... I think he's a very emotionally available actor. Yes, he is. He's a phenomenal actor. This performance, even though I think there's faults in the film. That's true. I like this performance probably more than any other film of his. So far. I mean, we've seen what? Five. I want to say five, six? Yeah. Something like that. So I'm still a baby. So we still need to see more. And clearly because I didn't like it as much as you. Yeah, you hate it. It'll just... I'll be told... Sent him more death threats, everyone. I'm a Kamal Hasan hater. I should stop reviewing Indian cinema. Probably should. Yeah. Probably should. I'm not going to stop, so... How many SRK films have I not liked? We love the man. Like, I hate Dev Doss and think he was terrible. I'm not an SRK hater. Just a little perspective there. But yes, I loved his performance. I thought it was great. I thought all the music by Rajasar... Unsurprisingly. Nonsurprisingly. I got nothing negative about that. The score was great. The score was absolutely wonderful. I thought she was lovely, by the way. Jaya? I actually, of the performances... You liked hers? Hers was my favorite of everybody in the thing. Kamal Hasan hater over here, I guess. I agree. I thought she did not agree. I thought she was lovely. But I thought she did a really good job. And I believed their relationship. And I was invested in their relationship. That's one of the things I wish we'll get into the filmmaking. There's some aspects of the filmmaking that didn't allow me. Me personally, there may be other people that got there. And that's fine. For me, the filmmaking didn't do that for me. That didn't let me get so invested in them enough where the emotional arc brought me to where I felt the film could have brought me. Because ultimately I think the story is a great story. It's a very good story. Yeah, I was... On the filmmaking side... And yeah, she was great, like I said. I think she brought it in the flashback times and the present times as well. I thought she did a really good job. And for an 80s film in the 80s, big applause for the hair and makeup people. It didn't look like dreadful, bad high school theater makeup. It actually looked legit aging. Yeah. Really, really good makeup and hair. And him as well. I thought all the performances were actually really good. They weren't really... Because sometimes in older films, you can get some performances that are just... That are just painful. Painful because of the time. And it's not like it's like, oh, that's a stylized time. It's like, oh, they're bad. Yeah. This film, I don't think it had any of that. No, it didn't. I do agree in the second half, that's probably when my engagement fell off. Probably in the last 45 minutes, maybe when they actually caught up to real life. Real time. And because I was... Even though surprising, I'm usually more engaged in the real time and I don't like the flashbacks. Obviously it's the 80s, so I can't really critique that aspect. Yeah. But I was a lot more engaged in the first two hours, I guess, of the film. And I got less engaged as they went on to like, okay, now this is this and this is their dilemmas with this. Right. This is their blah, blah, blah, blah. I could feel them wrapping it up. Yeah. Yeah. And that way, I don't think it was bad, it wasn't as engaging for me as the first half was. Yeah. And I don't know if it's so much the script as it was pacing. Like, one of the things that was jarring for me was her being on the train. On the train. Yeah. Because being on the train because she was going to leave. Yeah. And then he goes back to catch her to bring her back. Right. And it goes from her being on the train I'm leaving and then he slaps her and then she's in his hospital room. It was like just a quick, it felt like they were just trying to wrap stuff up at the end in a couple of spots. And I also felt believability story wise. There were some things that happened that for me were just like, well, of course she would arrive right at the moment that he's praying for her. And of course, while they're standing there, he's going to have an episode with his stomach. And of course that it's going to be his daughter. And of course it's going to be, you know, those moments for me, there wasn't anything unpredictable per se that caused me to feel a sense of, oh, revelatory or learn anything new per se. It was kind of as much as I love the story and felt like the way the story unfolded could have been a bit more exciting. That lost me some. And that differentiated it being loving the film to just liking the film. Because I remember from the first director you loved the first film we saw. More than this one. Yeah. I remember you raving about that. Yeah, yeah, much, much, much more than this one. Like I said, this one for me is a one and done. I saw it. I liked it. Wouldn't necessarily recommend it. If someone else loves it, hey, I'm happy you love it. I would definitely recommend it for Kamala's performance. And I think it's an overall good film and the dance performances as well. Those were incredibly engaging. Yeah, the dance. Every single one. You know how we love watching classical music and classical dance. It felt like watching those, honestly. Yeah, it was like the classical music ones we've seen where there's just these amazing song numbers and you get to just revel in the gloriousness of the artistry. Also, I wanted to know in that one where he was drunk, right? And he was doing it on the pole. Yeah. I wanted to know what actually this set looked like. Me too. How high up was he? Was it just like two feet under the ground? Yeah. That's probably what it was because they're not going to risk the star falling down a well. Yeah. But also it wouldn't surprise me if Kamala San was like, I want to do this. And I'm sure I could tell there were some moments that seemed to be highlighted enough that if you understood the culture, you probably would have recognized what the director was doing that we would miss. I really saw some moments. I can't think of one specifically right now, but I remember there being at least three or four moments. Even something like this, like when his bicycle crashed amongst the goats, right? In my mind, I thought was, because the director gave me the feeling he was doing that a lot, that there were moments where even something as simple as, or innocuous as crashing amongst the goats, that that might have had some symbolism in the imagery. I don't know that it did. It may have not. He may have just crashed his bike amongst the goats. But there might have been something from folklore or culture or something that hearkened back to something in my gut tells me. There's a bunch of stuff that I probably would have missed and thought more highly of the film if I understood those things. Yeah, maybe. I also thought there were a lot of really good cinematography for the time in some of the shots. There was a bunch of different kind of shadow shots. There were a lot of shadows in this. And also obviously the whole message of, I mean it had to ride as the film ended. Yeah. And then what was the exact wording of it? Art never ends, I think. Art never ends, I think. There's something along those lines. And obviously he, especially in his younger days of the message of he was, they were trying to get him to, which was a funny scene I thought, trying to get him to do the movie star moves, kind of choreograph for the movie stuff. And he was like, I'm having to lessen my art for this. Yeah. So the overall message, I was like, yeah, I get it. I totally get it. Yeah. And there was obviously a lot of that. It was, man, I would love to be able to talk to him because I'm sure he learned all these dances. Maybe not, I actually wouldn't shock me if he tried to learn specifically each dance or if he just obviously learned the choreograph for each dance. Yeah. So I don't know, but at that time, 1980s, he might have just knew he was doing it and tried to, he's the kind of actor that I think, I think he's method adjacent. Yeah. I think he's method adjacent in that he will completely, well, DDL is full-blown method. Danny Daylors is Danny Daylors. Yeah, he's full-blown method. And I bet it's one of the reasons he stopped theater because you can't be full-blown method and do theater aside from the dad issue. If you don't know what we're talking about, it's okay. But I think he is like obsessed with perfecting any aspect of a character he's playing. Like if he was going to play a CIA agent, he would know every nuance and he would repeat every hand movement of his gun and his badge thousands of times. He'd be the kind of guy like, Brian Cranston talks about getting to know a kitchen and that if you're filming a scene in a kitchen, he'll want to spend like an hour in the kitchen walking around and memorizing where everything is so that when the scene happens, if it's his kitchen, you don't have to think about where anything is. Yeah. Smart. It's very smart. It's just, that's being a good actor. Yeah. But yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if he was... Yeah, absolutely. And obviously... Training. How early was this in his career? It had to have been really early. I mean, what was he in this? Was he maybe 30? I'm trying to go down here. 35? If he's older than that, I'd be shocked because then I don't know how old he is now. It's in 1983. And he has a lot of credits. So yeah, we're back to 78, 77, 76. 83. I would have thought he'd be in his 30s. When was he born? Because I thought he's like my dad's age. That must have been a kid. He must have been a kid. How old is Kamal Hassan? Oh yeah, he's a little younger, my dad. He's 67. Yeah, he would have been around 30. In this? In this. He would have been roughly around 30 years old probably. So it looks like he started real young. Like he might have been a child actor. Like a child actor. So he's grown up around cinema. Yeah. And so that's probably one of the reasons he loves it so much is that this is his life. This is kind of what he's always got. Sure. And it makes sense. But anyways, did we miss talking about any... The writers don't leave out the writers. I try not to, especially if you follow us on Twitter. Yeah. Yeah. So the writing, we talked about Rajasar's music. There wasn't anything... If we don't mention something, for example, like... If we don't mention something, it's because it was neither blaringly bad or glowingly great. Like production design for this, I thought was good. I didn't have a problem with it, nor was there anything that just blew my mind. Same thing with costuming. I thought costuming was good. Yeah. Didn't necessarily blow my mind. I thought Rajasar's score was very, very good, but there was nothing specifically like drew me away from the film and was like amazed by the score. I loved all the songs. I liked all the songs. And I think he composed all the stuff. Yeah. I liked all the songs. So part of it. I didn't love them all. I liked them all. So let us know when we should murder Rick in an aquarium at the stake down below. Yeah. It's amazing. It really is amazing how, you know, just, it doesn't happen here in America, kids. It just doesn't happen here. Like if somebody, I mean, there are critics here who will freaking skewer films. And the fan base doesn't attack the critic. They may say the critics are complete idiot. That's fine. But it's called having a difference of opinion. It's an amazing idea. Also, Rick did like the film. So I just want to re-establish that everybody knew. If I don't say it the way they want it said, I'm a dick. Well, you are a dick. It's all my driver's license. Dick. Is the actual dick? No, I'm Richard. I was like, what? I'm Richard. That'd be weird. Anyways, so yeah, let us know what the next Kamahasan film should be. The next film by this director as well, because obviously he's a well-established director. And I was trying to find the direction. Hey, wait a minute. What? Was that, were you on Kamahasan's page and that said something was in post-production? Well, Vikram. Is that what Indian 2 is up here? No, no, no, no. This, what is this? Well, there's an Indian 1. And we've seen... Yeah, but what's Indian 2? That's the sequel to Indian. We just the other day actually saw a song from it. Do you remember? Whatever. We saw a song from Indian. I want to say two weeks ago. I don't think it's ever going to make it on the channel because I think it was blocked, but... Yeah, it's a pretty famous film of his. Indian 2. Yes. We reacted to a song from Indian 2? Yes, yes, we reacted to a song from Indian 2. His next film, which we will hopefully see in theaters, is Vikram, which will be very exciting because the trailers have been so fun and it has that cast. Hope I like it. Let us know what the next Kamahasan Tolugu film and the film by this director should be down below.