Thoughts on RRR

I feel like RRR showcased a style of melodrama that I don't see super frequently. The term that comes to mind is "legibility", a word/concept that @austin has placed into my brain. RRR doesn't try to use lots of dialogue or subtle acting, it leans into big emotions in all directions and keeps both the content and conveyance relatively easily understood, but then treats those big emotions as real and legitimate.

Mild spoilers below:

For example, when Bheem learns the truth about Raju from Seetha, he's overcome with emotion and falls to weeping before deciding to act, and in that moment I too mirrored his feelings of understanding and grief and desire to act. He didn't need a ton of exposition, we didn't need 5 minutes of extended build up, we just needed him to hear the reveal and then display the reaction.

I watch a fair amount of tv/movies, not as many as y'all, but enough that I feel like I have a modest understanding of how cinema works, and yet I was surprised by how simple and yet how raw RRR felt. Every sad sequence had me welling up with tears (the intro with Malli being stolen away, the reunion in the governor's house, the death sequence in the village ("load, aim, shoot"), Bheem's song about giving his life to mother earth, etc), and yet every action sequence had me almost jumping out of my seat. It also managed to pull off some jokes (Bheem's misunderstanding of Jenny's name) and the romance storyline was super thin but still had some emotional weight.

Some of the most fun I've had in a movie in years.