ligers is a dead duck from the start, explains Sukanya Verma.

Bush-haired, bearded modern-day caveman leaping in the air to the sound of deafening drums and beating up half a dozen thugs while the bird-brained heroine claps her hands in delight, ligers and his moth-eaten manner shows little regard for his craft, his cast, or the split-second audience.

As if a hackneyed, clueless plot of this simultaneously bilingual Telugu/Hindi shoot wasn’t already embarrassing, director Puri Jagannadh’s off-putting humor and ridiculous ambitions make sure of it ligers is a dead duck from the start.

A quarrelsome tea seller (Ramya Krishnan) and her stuttering son Liger (Vijay Devarakonda, so named because of the logic of lion, tiger and Brangelina) move from Benares to Mumbai in hopes of taking the boy to a mixed martial Arts fighters like his father make the sports veteran (Ronit Roy) to train him for free.

It’s hard enough to focus on every random scenario Liger throws our way without having to endure the hero’s mother screaming her lungs out in every single scene.

Agreed, Ramya is the queen of glow and can explode in endless rage at the first opportunity. But between her extreme outbursts and Vijay Devarakonda’s struggle to finish a word, the film drains our patience faster than its wiry star completes his cursory MMA training.

Devarakonda’s unruly manhood in Arjun Reddy continues to influence his Bollywood debut.

All of his incredible charisma and intensity is reduced to a show monkey in spandex trunks.

Actually more than the contact sport, ligers is interested in showing Ananya Panday in a dim-witted light.

Whatever good she has done Gehraiyaan is undone when Tania, a social media-obsessed airhead, lures the hero by flaunting her figure and fluttering her eyelashes.

“I’m going to Hollywood to pursue an acting career,” she tells Liger, face impassive. (That’s not even remotely far-fetched in a film where U.S. visas arrive faster than passport photos, and the hero and his minions are immediately flown to Vegas in private jets by compliant NRI billionaires.)

Jagannadh’s world view of women is alarmingly narrow.

There’s a breast-pounding mother whose ‘Uth Hall‘ Screams to her son transcend the TV screen.

There’s a legitimate brat who exists only to throw themselves at the hero, shake a leg in his itty-bitty outfits, turning hostile for no rhyme or reason, only to be humiliated and demonized.

“Where’s my vodka?” demands Ananya in a moment of desperation. You will too.

Somewhere between Ma and misogyny, a dozen She-Hulks appear out of nowhere, waking Liger’s not-so-dormant Arjun Reddy.

At the time his idol Mike Tyson delivers his main attraction, ligers has long been redeemed.

One can only hope the legendary boxer made a killing for a clumsy performance that somehow ends up sitting on a Nevada ranch flanked by cowboys and fanboys. (That is a long story.)

What now? A sequel called Wimp? Worm and Chimpanzee crossbreed, anyone?

Rediff Rating: