Rang Rasiya Movie Review

Here is the review for the movie Rang Rasiya. Watch out this space for more updates!

Rating:4/5 Review By: Site:Times of India

Randeep Hooda's performance is superb, maturing from a swarthy, 'swarthee kalakaar' to the first determined defender of the freedom of expression in modern India. In a hilarious scene, as Lokmanya Tilak delivers a speech, Varma breezily flirts with pretty journalist Frenny (Ferena Wazeir), later an ageing, wheezing man dismissing critics arrogantly, guilt-struck when Sugandha's socially mocked.
Alongside, Nandana's portrayal poignantly brings alive the lustrous power of a woman - divinely - in love. Paresh Rawal etches a characteristically sharp cameo as canny merchant Govardhan Das while Vikram Gokhale and Darshan Jariwala drip spite at Varma's art which, via mass-printing, brings the divine home to all - including those called Untouchable, barred from temples.

Rating:4/5 Review By:Mohar Basu Site:Koimoi

Smeared in color, vibrancy and sensuality, Rang Rasiya revels in its operatic beauty and narrates a liberating tale of love, passion and freedom of vision. Ketan Mehta brings out the best from its actors Randeep and Nandana; especially the latter who unleashes on screen much beyond her sublime beauty, the vulnerability of her character. The inspirational story tells an uninhibited tale of a man who will always remain eternal through his art.

Rating:3.5/5 Review By: Site:Hindustan Times

Rang Rasiya is much more than just a period film. It’s a statement on behalf of people who reject intolerance and are continuously striving for a new India which will give space to free voice. It’s a piece of art.

Rating:4/5 Review By:Koel Purie Site:India Today

Besides, Anil Mehta's stunning cinematography, under director Ketan Mehta's keen eye for detail, colour and design, is a treat. The climax can make any lover of freedom and art weep, the message is clear, strong, non preachy and sadly still so needed.
Randeep Hooda as Raja Ravi Verma is a great choice. He has a regal enough face (especially with that perfect nose), that can as easily look lecherous and manipulative. He particularly sparkles when he argues in court against the imprisonment of his thoughts and art and when he cruelly dismisses his muse's claim to a life outside his imagination. Randeep is so comfortable embodying the legendary painter that you believe him and want to support his fight almost all the time, except when he ages dramatically and somehow no one else around him does. And when he looks as uncomfortable as the audience in those unnecessary love making scenes.

Rating:5/5 Review by:Subhash K Jha Site:IANS

A masterpiece by any reckoning, "Rang Rasiya" has a dazzling display of colour, desire, erotica, drama and emotions. This is Mehta's most intricately woven and enchantingly textured drama since "Mirch Masala".
Among the many startling ideas that emerge from Mehta's majestic exploration of religion, art, sex and the male ego is the one suggesting that Dada Saheb Phalke's dream of making a film was funded by Raja Ravi Varma.
Thank god and Varma, then, for the birth of Indian cinema.
And thank god and cinema for Ketan Mehta, who lives to tell the tale. If you love art and cinema, and cinema as art, then don't miss this one.

Rating:2/5 Review By:Shubhra Gupta Site:Indian Express

'Rang Rasiya’ feels like a choppy costume drama marred by false notes and static ‘acting’ : the fluidity and the authentic sense of time and place needed for a film like this, qualities so beautifully woven through Mehta’s classics ‘Bhavni Bhavai’ and ‘Mirch Masala’, are missing. Both Hooda and Sen are presented as gleaming bodies on ample display we are meant to fall in lust with, and both are eminently drool-worthy. But in all this, the characters go missing.
Varma deserves a deeper, more layered film.

Rating:3.5/5 Review By:Saibal Chatterjee Site:NDTV

Randeep does not strike a single false note in a complex interpretation of a towering figure, capturing the highs and lows of Raja Ravi Varma's life with effortless ease.
Nandana Sen, too, is pitch-perfect as Sugandha. She is the ideal foil to the moody male protagonist, traversing an entire gamut of emotions - from the charmingly coquettish to the deeply conflicted and anguished, from moments of ecstatic love to the trough of a death wish - without losing her poise.
The surfeit of music, both in terms of songs and the background score, strikes a discordant note in a film that is otherwise well modulated.
Why must a film about art be overlaid with so much music? As difficult to grasp as that might be, very little else in Rang Rasiya is out of place.
This film has been in the cans for several years, but given the timelessness of the story it tells and the crucial issues it addresses, it has lost none of its relevance.
Rang Rasiya is as good a film as any you have, or will, see this year. Strongly recommended.

Rating:2.5 Review By:Bollywood Hungama News Network Site:Bollywood Hungama

While the film moves at a fairly quick pace throughout, the climax seems to be a little stretched. Sometimes adapting an entire book in a span of approximately 120 minutes can prove to be an almost impossible task and RANG RASIYA too seems to be a victim of it. The film which starts with an auction of one of Raja Ravi Varma's famous painting seems to have had an abrupt ending too.
On the whole, RANG RASIYA is for the artistic and creative people who believe in freedom of expression but it surely won't woo the janta who are looking for entertainment and a getaway this weekend.

Rating:/5 Review By:Aparna Mudi Site:Zee News

Despite all its flaws, it is relevant even today. It has a message that humanity struggles to accept a lot of things, and the more open-minded we are – the more towards greatness we move as a race. But the message gets lost in the overly forced romance. Watch it to learn the story of a great artist, who is historically significant to the rise of Indian art. But there is little else to offer.

Rating:/5 Review By:Raja Sen Site:Rediff

Rang Rasiya is not a consistent film, but one that tells a story of a pioneering artist and visionary, a story decidedly worth telling.
We need to treasure our creators and innovators, and while I wish the film was carved by the blade of the edgier Ketan Mehta (of Mirch Masala vintage), I’m relieved that at least films like these are being made and -- in relation to the exposure important in context of the censorship debate -- that we’re getting to see them.