The Raja Saab Review: The Overwhelming Monotony of Being Prabhas

There’s a thin line between self-belief and outright overconfidence. And Prabhas, touted to be India’s first “pan-Indian superstar” crossed it a long time ago. When the total budget of your films for 2026 crosses the GDP (gross domestic product) of a small country, you cannot afford guesswork or indulgence in any of your projects. And yet, there’s a bit of apparent tic-tac-toe at play in the choice of projects he has been taking up.

It’s now clear to anyone with half a brain that Prabhas has chosen to play the same character — an heir in hiding — in every film since Baahubali: The Beginning. Change the period, the setting, the hero’s motivation, the genre, the budget and whatever else you will, the man continues to play that role over and over again.

The Raja Saab is no different, in that measure. A film filled with absolute halfheartedness, it seems to not care about its inherent whimsiness. It’s almost as if Maruthi (the film’s director and screenwriter) let a hyperactive kitten run wild in his balls of yarn (it doesn’t feel at any point that a script was involved in this project). Kotagiri Venkateshara Rao (the film’s editor) seems to have taken a break from his duties, further accentuating that disconnect throughout the film. For a project that parades itself to be a horror comedy, Maruthi’s movie plays out as less of a tried-and-tested genre mashup and more of a mish-mash that never really lands.

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Long story short, The Raja Saab is about Raju (Prabhas), who lives with his Alzheimer’s-affected grandmother Gangamma (Zarina Wahab) in Hyderabad in semi-penury (or so, a flashback will have you believe). He grows up being told and retold that they were cheated out of an inheritance. And that his absentee grandfather, Kanakaraju (Sanjay Dutt) went missing while pursuing the cheat. How he seeks out his gramps while falling in love (or lust) with every female his age, while getting stuck in the labyrinth of a haunted mansion in the middle of a forest and learns some uncomfortable truths about his past.

The Raja Saab’s religious ignorance is front-and-center with Prabhas falling hard for Bessy (Nidhhi Agerwal), a postulant/nun-in-training, who is in ‘full uniform’ [the actual habit that nuns wear], chats up a 10-year-old in the same ‘uniform’ and later in the movie, Bessy sits in a confessional (which is something only priests have the authority to do) across Prabhas and flirts with him. The medical ignorance is as bad.Just like a certain Bollywood film released late last year, selective amnesia is passed off as Alzheimer’s. In fact, Prabhas goes further and mocks it every chance he gets.

Harking back to the halfheartedness I spoke about earlier, Maruthi never once tells you how his main character dresses to the nines or makes his money. He never tells you how a character who’s dead for most of the film is spotted in a picture. Or how that same character’s ghost’s Scrooge McDuck-iness works out in the afterlife. How every major character in this movie lands up in aforementioned mansion with uncanny alacrity and laser-sharp focus. How the corrupt cop subplot goes nowhere. We never know if the little girl who needs a heart transplant ever gets the heart/funds she needs. Or why Boman Irani’s Dr Padmabhushan comes through and is disposed off without much of an afterthought. It’s not all bad, though. The production design (Rajeevan) is top-notch. The VFX passes muster, but just about.

At a bloated 180-minute plus runtime, this film’s self-indulgence begs the question: Do we really need a Part 2? Or does it deserve to be in a deep pit ‘duur andar’ (deep inside) the earth and forgotten about under the pretense of Alzheimer’s?

You will need to watch it to find out. God help you if you find the courage to.