“This movie is great on whatever-sized screen you watch, but it’s next-level in a full theater with a rabid audience.” The spectacular RRR, back in theaters by popular demand.

If you haven’t experienced the Indian blockbuster RRR in a theater, good news, we are bringing it back! The movie is an exhilarating, action-packed spectacular mythologizing two real-life freedom fighters who helped lead India’s fight for independence from the British Raj, Komaram Bheem (N.T Rama Rao Jr., aka Jr NTR) and Alluri Sitarama Raju (Ram Charan). Set in the 1920s, before their fight for India’s independence began, RRR imagines a fictional meeting between the two, set into motion when a young Gond girl is stolen from her village by British soldiers. With a powerful message, staggeringly choreographed action sequences, and an all-timer of a musical number, RRR is sheer big-screen joy from start to finish, and it is something best experienced with an audience to fully appreciate big and loud, as intended.

The New York Times recently published a story about the RRR phenomenon headlined “How the Indian Action Spectacular RRR Became a Smash in America.” Among the U.S. exhibitors quoted about helping making the film a cross-over hit is Laemmle Theatres president Greg Laemmle:

L.A. Times lead film critic Justin Chang included RRR on his list of 10 best films for the first half of 2022:

“The longest feature on my list runs more than three hours and earns every supercharged minute. Already the second-highest-grossing Indian film of all time in America (it’s grossed more than $140 million worldwide), S.S. Rajamouli’s Telugu-language sensation is a hellaciously entertaining mash-up of history and legend, politics and romance, hyperviolent action and song-and-dance musical, venomous snakes and throat-mauling tigers. As the two mighty warriors whose tender bromance becomes a truly infernal affair, N.T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan are forces of nature.”

(Side note: even though Justin included the film in his Top 10, the film still hasn’t actually had a full review in the Times. Yet another example of good films not getting reviewed by the tragically thin Times film section.)

Finally, Variety just published a story headlined “How India’s Action Epic RRR Could Bring the Country’s First Oscar Nom in 21 Years.”

“A movie with the action sensibilities of James Cameron and the ambitious scope of George Miller has to be considered a definitive Oscar contender, right? Not without the proper backing by a studio or, in this case, a country that will submit your film for the Academy’s best international feature award.

“Enter RRR, a film directed by S. S. Rajamouli, who wrote the script with V. Vijayendra Prasad. The three-hour action epic follows two patriotic but philosophically opposed men (Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr.), who team up to rescue a girl from British colonial officials in 1920s Delhi.

“When the 94th Oscar nominations were announced back in January 2022, India’s official submission “Pebbles” was not among the films recognized for international feature. It marked exactly 20 years since India’s last nom in the category.

“In fact, only three Indian films in total —Mother India (1957), Salaam Bombay! (1988) and Lagaan (2001) — have been nominated for the award. The last of which lost to No Man’s Land from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“The skyrocketing success of RRR has been the undercover Cinderella story of the year. A global smash with huge box office receipts, the film found a pathway to the American cultural zeitgeist with consumers discovering it on Netflix. It was distributed theatrically by Variance Films in the U.S., and a current trend by the Academy to embrace non-English language features in the last few years offers an alternative pathway to awards recognition if India decides to look elsewhere. But why would they?”

Read the rest of the piece here.