‘Kuberaa’ (2025) Movie Review - An Amateur's Notion Of Cinema

There is a scene in Sekhar Kammula's Kuberaa where Deva (Dhanush), a beggar, recognizes his, um, colleagues and sits with them in front of the fire. The other beggars instantly distance themselves from him, and through their eyes, they say, "Go away, you fool. You are not one of us." Why? Because Deva is wearing a suit (long story, don't ask), which makes him look like a wealthy person. Now take another scene in which Sameera (Rashmika Mandanna) is with a friend whose parents want her to leave their home (long story, don't ask). The friend hands Sameera some cash and urges her to move to a girl's hostel (Kammula gives us a closeup of the cash). These two scenarios encapsulate what Kuberaa is truly about: fame, money, and appearances. You see, the world is a dirty place where everyone and everything revolves around lucre. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and politicians and businessmen are colluding to protect their interests. Who would have thought? I was under the impression that India has become a superpower! Thank you, Kammula, for shattering that illusion. I will return the favor by asking you to step out of your own bubble. Yes, we know the country is in a mess. What we want is movies that are at least competent.

But if Kuberaa tells us anything, it's that Kammula is not interested in being competent. He takes the easy route; he does cheap emotional manipulation. What's funny is that Kammula even fails to do the job of a hack. The music - or call them emotional cues - surrounds us and screams at us to feel whatever Kuberaa wants us to feel at any given moment. The music, in fact, works overtime to sell scenes that look incredibly dumb. Neeraj Mitra (Jim Sarbh), a high-profile CEO, enlists the help of former CBI officer Deepak Tej (Nagarjuna) to convert black money into white and transfer funds to politicians. Deepak says that he needs some time to create a perfect plan. Cut to the next scene, in which a beggar knocks on Deepak's car window for cash, leading him to realize that he can use the beggars to transfer finances. This is Dumb Screenwriting 101. Don't show your character thinking, ruminating, planning, testing his next course of action; just quickly take him to the solution. Oh, how I wish that there weren't any more problems. However, when you make films with the sole intention of "teaching the audience," you often neglect other crucial aspects (just look at Sitaare Zameen Par, which was released alongside Kuberaa). The scene where Neeraj talks to politicians, the scene where Deepak meets his wife inside the prison, and the scene where Deepak looks at the beggars and comes up with the solution have the same tone. One might as well just say that Kuberaa is toneless - it's not conceived as a work of art but as a work of shallow emotional trigger. Is the scene serious? Play an earnest tune. Do we want the audience to laugh? Play a funny tune. How about tears? Let the soundscape echo with cries of affliction. This is such a lazy approach that you feel like throwing your shoe at the screen, with your screams being the "background score." 

Someone should have told Kammula that after showing us Deva's pain and his escape from the clutches of Robot (Saurav Khurana), the arrival of the comedy track through the introduction of Sameera at the railway station looks clumsy and awkward. However, the film is in a haphazard state, as comedy and drama elements enter and exit without warning or organization. What else can you expect from a movie that has unidimensional cartoon villains? Robot even tries to force himself on Khushboo (Shravani), and Neeraj's voice is always contemptuous so that you don't have trouble buying them as monsters. Kammula doesn't have good taste; he only has shortcuts. Kuberaa is like instant noodles - everything is prepackaged and ready to be cooked. Kammula just tosses the ingredients into a pan on the stove and stirs. He displays no creativity, no fervor, no madness. When Deva escapes from a bathroom in the present, a brief flashback shows him escaping from another bathroom in almost the same manner. It feels as if Kammula and his co-writer, Chaithanya Pingali, first wrote the scenes that unfold in the present and then wrote the ones that occur in the past to force a connection between Deva's history and his current situation. To make matters worse, Dhanush's A for Acting role loudly calls attention to itself. As soon as he appears on the screen, we are asked to praise his makeup, his "transformation." We can clearly see Dhanush's efforts and exaggerations. He almost cries for an Oscar. This only further widens the gap between the screen and the audience. 

In Kuberaa, a team of beggars works for a good guy who is forced to do shady things due to personal circumstances. Kammula wants you to consider this idea as a great virtue and demands a pat on the back. I wanted to tell him that he hasn't even got his basics right, which is why we don't care about Deepak, justice, or beggars. Kuberaa is an amateur's notion of cinema and what the audience wants from cinema. I was so bored that I started wondering why Robot didn't mix poison or a sleeping drug in the biryani before throwing the beggars into the water. And forget people like Neeraj and Robot; the real villains in Kuberaa are Deva and Sameera. They take a newborn kid to a garbage dump without considering the harm that can be caused by the foul smell (a baby should be handled with care and attention). Khushboo must have been surely cursing Deva and Sameera from heaven.

Final Score- [1/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times