(This post was supposed to be posted earlier...)
In the 67th National Film Awards, Maharshi won two awards:
1. The Golden Lotus Award for Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment
and
2. The Silver Lotus Award for Best Choreography
Now, the second award actually makes sense, but the first award? I get the popular part, and I'm willing to let go of the wholesome part (I guess it really depends on your definition of wholesome), but it definitely was not the BEST of the popular wholesome films. (I genuinely did not like Maharshi- I thought it was overrated and unoriginal.) There were so many other movies in 2019 that provided more wholesome entertainment, like Jersey (a much better option, in my opinion), Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya, Brochevarevarura, and more (from other languages as well). But why Maharshi? It wasn't even creative. It was tailor-made to suit Mahesh Babu's social change movies.
It all unfortunately started with Srimanthudu, which was actually a good movie (besides his routine acting). The organic-farming thing hadn’t come into Telugu cinema then, so it was nice and new, but his next few movies became rehashes of Srimanthudu's successful formula. Bharath Ane Nenu took a similar social message issue to make itself a hit, and literally had Mahesh Babu be a person of power. Maharshi took it a step further and literally combined the “organic farming social message” and “oh look I’m someone rich but I pity y’all so I won’t show off” and remixed it weirdly. It was more like Srimanthudu Ane Nenu rather than Maharshi.
Having said all this, I'm still happy that Jersey won two awards (Best Telugu film and Best editing). I thought it was waaaaaaaay better than Maharshi.
That's it.
That's the end of this rant.
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