Cinema 1544: The As-Official-As-It-Gets Site

For his second (non-consecutive) film, Raghava decided to go back to the S.S. Rajamouli well, this time selecting a film that managed to double down on the ridiculous chaos of his (later) film RRR, which is quite a feat.  He did this with 2012’s Eega (this means “The Fly”, and is not to be confused with the 50-year-earlier homophonic Arch Hall Jr. and  Richard Kiel film.)

Let me begin this write up with a question: Have you ever had a fly torture you so relentlessly that you began to think it had a particular vendetta against you?  Because I’m pretty sure Rajamouli has been there.  I mean, you’d have to in order to write this film.

I’ve always wanted to date the GIMP splash screen!

The film starts innocently enough – we’ve got the goofy-but-handsome Nani who has spent the last two years trying to woo the smokin’-hot Bindu, who has herself spent the last two years pretending not to notice and instead running some for-the-kids foundation and honing her skills as a “microartist”.  (If you think the astonishingly-specific microartist thing isn’t going to play into a movie about a fly, you’re not very imaginative.)

Man, I really hate backseat race drivers

At any rate, Nani is pretty convinced that he’s about to make a breakthrough when a rival appears on the scene – a richer-than-Croesus playboy businessman called Sudeep who is used to getting any woman he wants, and who focuses his next efforts on Bindu, starting out by making a generous donation to her foundation.

The problem for Sudeep is that Nani was right – he was on the verge of that breakthrough, and Bindu is now ready to admit it, and she scorns Sudeep in favor of the guy who has really put in the work.  The problem for Nani is that Sudeep is…willing to murder him to land Bindu.  And that’s exactly what Sudeep does.

Watch out for me!

And, in a moment that I suppose is a bit less unexpected in a Hindu culture, Nani finds himself reincarnated as a common housefly, slowly regaining his memories of his past life as he first struggles to gain meaningful control of his new body, all the while dodging multiple hideous deaths that you might imagine would plague houseflies.

That’s what you get for wearing eau de merde de vache

And the first thing that Nani does when he’s finally comfortable flying around is to begin tormenting Sudeep.  Like, really driving him crazy torment stuff.   All the while, Sudeep is trying to horn in on the maybe-newly-emotionally-available Bindu, taking a larger role in her foundation and finally scheming a way to get her to fly away on a business trip with him.  Nani, of course, is having none of this, and he manages to buzz a traffic cop into causing a traffic jam that threatens to make Sudeep late for his plane while Bindu awaits him at the airport.  Then, when Sudeep manages to abandon his car and instantaneously borrow another from a serendipitously-located associate’s car lot that just happens to be free of the massive traffic jam that’s like right there, Nani buzzes about inside the car enough to cause Sudeep to get into a five-alarm crash that he probably shouldn’t have survived.  It won’t be the last time that Sudeep uses up some cat lives.  At any rate, following the crash, Nani announces himself by writing “I Will Kill You” on the windshield, leading Sudeep to correctly divine the situation.

Normally this is the moment that you close the window in relief

Meanwhile, Nani manages to announce himself to Bindu as well, and to her credit, she is relatively quick to accept that a spelling fly might actually be the reincarnation of her beloved Nani.  Together they begin to plot how to kill Sudeep.  Now, you might think that since Bindu A) is very large compared to Nani and B) already has the trust of Sudeep, that maybe SHE should be the one to carry out the deed – but really, who wants a murderess?  So instead, she helps Nani in various plots to ambush Sudeep by creating tiny tools for him like bug-spray-repellent goggles and gunpowder-carrying-nano-buckets with her microartist skills, the latter being used in an attempt to load a small decorative cannon at Sudeep’s house with powder and shot to blast him.  This is a long shot, and gets thwarted when an associate of Sudeep’s shoves some trash into the cannon’s barrel.

Nonetheless, the war escalates, with Sudeep making his mansion air-tight, and Bindu both sneaking Nani in, and undoing a screw in a windowpane to give him some ingress.  Finally, and completely out of nowhere, Sudeep consults with some sort of fire-demon shaman and I realize that this is really just a live-action Disney movie, isn’t it?  Anyway, the shaman conjures up some serious shit, but it only results a ton of destruction in Sudeep’s house and in himself being impaled on a broken bottle, and while Nani flies away triumphantly believing Sudeep to be dead in the chaos, there’s still like half an hour of movie left.

There’s nothing to plunder/I’m an over-40 victim of fate

So we’ve got to have one more encounter, and this time the stakes are raised because Sudeep has figured out that Bindu is helping Nani, and he takes her prisoner in his home in an attempt to get the upper hand.  Again, there’s an incredible amount of chaos and destruction, with Sudeep and his minions emptying an entire wall of automatic weapons throughout the house in an attempt to kill Nani, and somewhere along the line, the trash blocking the already-loaded cannon comes loose.  Still, Nani makes the mistake of charging Sudeep with a sewing needle, and Sudeep captures him by pinning his legs between the needle and a magnet.  He rips off one of Nani’s wings so he can’t fly and tries to force Bindu to kill her reincarnated Musca domestica lover with a cigarette lighter.  Nani sees his chance, and makes one final fatal leap through the flames, igniting himself as he manages to soar into the cannon and become the spark to ignite the powder that has been there for so long.  The shot goes right through Sudeep’s heart and furthermore pierces some gas canisters causing a huge explosion that totally definitely kills Sudeep (but it’s OK, somehow or another Bindu managed to get to safety at the last second).

And, as a reward for the virtuous life he lived and the great deeds and magnificent revenge that he was able to carry out, Nani is rewarded by being reincarnated as…another housefly.  Wait, what a rip-off!  What does this dude have to do to get to be, like, a kitten or something?  Oh well.  The End.

So…horseflies?

Except for, of course, the gloriously goofy credits.