Lion plus Tiger is Liger, but then garlic plus cabbage is garbage. Liger is just lazy filmmaking overall. Half the lines are mouthed in Hindi and others are in Telugu. The characters have no depth whatsoever. Hello and welcome to Film Companions South. You're watching Not a Taller Review. My name is Rida Arunjan. This week's film is Liger, directed by Puri Jagannath. The film stars Dha Vijay Devar Konda. And Ananya Pandey and Ramya Krishna. Few years ago, I was supposed to write an article ranking all of Puri Jagannath's movies. I agreed only to realize that the man had directed 37 movies. I watched all of them over four days and for the next few days, my head was a mishmash of all his movies. It was like poor hero, loofur, rich attractive girl, villain, drug sex, mother sentiment, foreign location. 20 years ago, when the heroes were supposed to be upright and moralistic, Puri's heroes were all rough ruffians. Two decades later, in an era when most of our protagonists are mostly anti-heroes, this idea seems extremely outdated. Liger is no exception. Liger is the son of Ramya Krishna. His real name is Liger. It's not a pet name or a ring name. Is he Liger ready? Liger Rao? Liger Gaud? Nobody bloody knows. Along with his mother, he has moved from Karimnagar to Mumbai to become an MMA fighter. Now a hero is supposed to have flaws and so our dude has a stutter. Not over a particular letter or a word or a phrase, he's constantly stammering out the first word of every sentence. The director uses this flaw to go for the lowest hanging fruits, like Laga, Dengay or Pu Pu Pu Puja. I mean, come on. Enter Ananya Pandey, a rich girl who parties on yachts, a social media celebrity who goes by the user name, Tanya underscored. She lives in 2010 when Facebook had just caught on an India and uses phrase like, OMG, then there is Ramya Krishna, a powerful actor stuck in the role of a mother. Now she's a powerful mother and angry mother. Her advice to her son is this, when you're fighting someone, imagine that they killed your father. Did you ever think about that? The problem with Liger is that it accords the audience no respect or intelligence. Puri Jagannath, whose spout's pop philosophy in his podcast, seems to assume that everybody watching his movie has single digit IQs. So instead of a half decent script, we are given a plot that just moves from fight to flirt to fight. Take the hero's journey, what really is his struggle? He gets into a top coaching camp in Mumbai in a few minutes. He takes on a few guys and gets accepted, becomes the teacher's favorite student. When he needs to go to the US, someone books him in a chartered flight. How are we supposed to empathize with this guy? Liger is just lazy filmmaking overall. Half the lines are mouthed in Hindi and others are in Telugu. The characters have no depth whatsoever. Everybody begins their lines by saying, Hey! The leads have the chemistry of Rocky siblings and seem like two students forced to act together in a high school play. And the entire story reeks of predictability. The only time when it isn't predictable is when the story spins into such absurdity that you are left wondering what the final draft. And the songs, like that song, that... That... I remember. Mike Tyson features in the movie but he's called Mark Anderson. Maybe it was to preserve his brand image or maybe he just read Liger's script who knows. If he sees this movie, he's going to bite his own ear off. Liger has no redeeming qualities. Vijaydhava Kunda apparently spent two years building his body for this film, but I wish he spent a few weeks in having a look at the story. For a hero who broke out by doing unconventional films, it is sad to see him star in films that make you pray for a brain surgery. The makers took everything unique about him and smashed it into generic fruit pulp. Ananya Pandey plays a bimbo who is grating on the nerves. She has the scream presence of a brinjal and makes Iliana seem like Meryl Streep in comparison. Ramya Krishna screams all through the movie. She proudly proclaims that her son is a crossbreed and her contribution to the script as such is Zilch. Liger feels like you've been cheated. After buying tickets almost worth 300 bucks, you don't even get a half-decent story and a climax. That is appalling. It doesn't stay true to any of its themes, but MMA, love story or the story of an underdog. The climax is an anticlimax and you leave the hall wondering what the hell just happened. So dear lions, tigers and crossbreeds. Would I recommend Liger to a companion? Yes, of course, just to see how badly a film can bomb. Very rarely do you see a movie that has nothing going for it. The entire film is a dumpster fire that you can't look away from. Lion plus tiger is Liger, but then garlic plus cabbage is garbage. Thank you so much for watching our review of the movie Liger. Do remember to subscribe to Film Companions South for more interviews, reviews and interesting videos. Thank you.