Double iSmart review: Puri Jagannadh’s self-sabotage act is messy, super problematic

Double iSmart will likely leave you baffled, and that too for a spectrum of reasons. If you are someone who sought some mindless fun on a national holiday, the film will offer you everything except that. If you are someone who expected Puri Jagannadh to chart a comeback after Liger (2022), the writer-director announces quite emphatically that he is in no mood for those niceties. And if you are someone with any sense of social conduct and just basic human decency, Double iSmart will infuriate you for confusing absolute vulgarity for casual entertainment.

The whole attempt of making a film almost comes off as an excuse—Double iSmart, beyond all other atrocities, feels like a most impudent film made by a filmmaker looking to satiate his sexual vagaries. Walking out of the movie hall, you grow certain that no woman, part of either the cast or the crew (including co-producer Charmme Kaur), was offered the script before they got on board. Women, here, are objectified, harassed (both sexually and physically) and treated with such cruelty and disdain that you wonder why a censor board exists as a governing entity.

Redundant plot

The plot is redundant at the end of it all. Shankar alias Ustaad “iSmart” Shankar (Ram Pothineni, who gives it all) is the same boorish, lion-hearted guy, we encountered in the 2019 film, and this spiritual sequel takes off on an entirely new storyline, except for one important aspect—Shankar knows he was once used as a guinea pig for a radical memory transfer process and even carries its scars.

In parallel, the ultra-evil Big Bull (Sanjay Dutt, sleep-walking through the performance) has been told that a tumour in his head is growing pretty, pretty fast and if he doesn’t do anything about it, he will be dead and gone in about 3 months.

Big Bull deals not only guns and narcotics but also pan masala and gutka and his lust for life (and women, of course) urges him to think of something outrageous to stay alive. “Have you tried transferring your memory to another guy? You could be immortal,” says a mad scientist who goes on to recommend iSmart Shankar as the perfect candidate for the job.

Turns out, the process is easier than copying data onto a pen drive and soon enough, Big Bull will continue living life his merry way in Shankar’s body.

Sub-par writing

Now, should you give Puri Jagannadh the benefit of the doubt for a minute, the ludicrous-sounding plot has the potential for some solid masala sci-fi (remember Venkat Prabhu’s Maanaadu?). Let’s include the fact that Shankar had once sworn to kill Big Bull himself owing to a prickly personal reason which means that the stakes are set extremely high for both men here: the ‘hero’ wants to kill the bad guy who, in turn, needs him to stay alive.

For a pulp mass film, Double iSmart Shankar proposes a deep philosophical equation but when the writer-director has made up his mind to wreck it all up without any hesitance, there’s nothing you could do to stop him. Well, you could always walk out but we are all a tad masochistic, aren’t we?

Puri Jagannadh, expends the entire first half, with a blitzkrieg of silly contrivances that range from the hero relentlessly tormenting a young woman, to an Amazonian tribal chieftain (played by veteran actor Ali), running on the loose in Hyderabad. The former portion is particularly provoking and gut-wrenching because the filmmaker, is seemingly, getting off at seeing the hero unsolicitedly feel up the said woman, kiss her without any consent and fetishize her at every chance he gets.

Total misfire 

The latter, as someone put it fittingly on social media, is arguably the cheapest comic-relief portion to be employed in a Telugu film to date. Forget innuendos, the sexual crassness is pretty darn direct here and Kavya Thapar, the film’s leading lady, is probably the biggest victim of all.

Did I forget to mention that there’s the mandatory mother sentiment squeezed into all of this? The very first line that iSmart Shankar utters is something about how a woman, in the form of his mother, taught him to live like a man. For a film that throws up such cliches at a whim, Double iSmart is misdirected right from the word go and even though it has a strong plot conceit, Puri Jagannadh approaches it purely as an act of self-sabotage.

Things do improve a tad in the second half as we see Shankar toggle between his own identity and that of Big Bull. But every time we expect the film to come to its senses, another bout of frivolity sets in and whatever’s relayed on the screen in front feels like an assault of a kind.

Even music composer Mani Sharma, who has previously delivered major hits with Puri Jagannadh, fails to salvage the film.

Final take

Double iSmart is full of Puri Jagannadh-esque eccentricities in that it is unabashed, skewed and rough around the edges. But these quirks of his were well in control when he was tethered to a vision: of delivering an unusual mass movie like Amma Nanna O Tamila Ammayi (2003) or Pokiri (2006). Having now thrown caution to the wind, one supposes the filmmaker needs to recalibrate himself and somehow find the old mojo that found him success, that set him apart from the rest. For now, it is best advised to relish his previous work than indulge in the latest misfire.

(Views expressed here are personal)

(Edited by S Subhakeerthana)

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