Everyone knows cinema is an art form. Every film industry has to have a commercial cinema because those are the ones that reach the masses, not the art films.

Commercial cinema takes each film industry to various audiences. I’ve known Kannada cinema for a very long time where they produce indie art films, but they also have some superstars who produce commercial films. I’ve been meaning to watch commercial Kannada cinema for a very long time, however, haven’t had a chance until recently. So there is this movie called Roberrt which was released this year. Starring one of the biggest Kannada movie stars. I watched this movie with zero expectations. I think that’s the way to explore a new film industry with Open-mindedness. Until watching Roberrt, I wasn’t sure that the Kannada film industry could produce big-budget movies, the aesthetic of the film, the music, art, and everything screams Big star, Big budget.

Cast: Darshan Thoogudeepa, Asha Bhat, Vinod Prabhakar, Ravi Kishan, Jagapathi Babu, P. Ravi Shankar, and many more.
Crew: Tharun Sudhir (Director), V. Harikrishna (Score), Arjun Janya (Songs), Sudhakar S. Raj (Cinematography), K.M. Prakash (Editor)

Roberrt is a mix of a lot of movies, people who have explored Tamil or Telugu cinema would know this better because this is a common commercial story that has been told many times. Roberrt resembles many of the Tamil cinema, for example, the first half kind of reminds me of Vedalam, Sathriyan, etc., and the second half is more or less Baasha.

The movie resembles many other films which we have seen previously and this might not be the case with Kannada audiences (assuming), What saves the movie largely is the hero Darshan, as a commercial star he does a decent job in emotions, but for some strange reason, there are few scenes, he looks bulged, and there are few scenes where he looks normal and you know, the scenes where he changes his posture and walks don’t seem nice.

Overall as an action movie, this works really well in its own right. There are a couple of songs which were really catchy and I really liked it and the regular you know, a typical mass masala hero type music was what this movie has given.

The story is about a timid person, who doesn’t like fighting and his son mocks him for doing so. Over the course of the first half, we are shown various of these instances but behind every such hero, there would often be a bloody past. Again which we have seen numerous times in Indian cinema. Maybe it might be new to Kannada audiences, I’m really not sure.

On the Commercial Cinema front we should start thinking bigger because most of the commercial cinema revolves around revenge or gangster or success formula, but maybe you know he has cancer is good, but we should move on we should see across about these revenge and revenge dramas revenge movies, and ask commercial formula.

We should start with smaller but interesting ideas, make the audiences comfortable with those genres, and try telling different stories. Say we had two Time travel films, which did decently. Maybe our directors should try more Time-travel films, make the audiences comfortable within that genre and explore more stories in it. I’m quoting Time-travel as an example and there are Zombie films as well. Two of the Tamil Zombie films released were utter non-sense and had a poor story and lazy screenplay but it is okay. We should start perfecting them.

This is the first Kannada commercial film I watched and it was a decent experience, although they could have scissored at least 30 to 40 minutes of the movies that were really boring and I was waiting for the movie to end. Overall, Roberrt is an okayish movie with nothing much to say or nothing wow about the story. So, what are your favorite Kannada commercial films? Do share them in the comments.

Roberrt is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Happy watching. 😇