If there’s one thing that keeps us from brooding too much, it is Ranveer Singh. Not once does he try to make us like him, and that makes us like him even more. As Bhansali’s Khilji, he is electric.

The problem lies not in Padmaavat being a costume drama, but in the fact that there is too much costume, too little drama. In the film’s opening scene, we see a king chewing roughly on a piece of poultry. This is a surprisingly small, tandoori-sized handful of bird, nothing compared to the way we have, in international film and television, watched vikings gnaw at giant animal legs the size of motorcycles. Therein lies the problem. There’s not nearly enough meat.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s 13th century epic would be infinitely poorer if not for Ranveer Singh’s electric performance that ends up exposing the blandness of the others around him…

I’m an admirer of Sanjay’s passion and rigour, of his operatic sensibility and his commitment to creating epics. He isn’t subtle but he always plays for broke. To steal a line from the poet Robert Browning – Sanjay’s reach always exceeds his grasp. That’s what a heaven’s for. This time he doesn’t quite get there.

I’m an admirer of Sanjay’s passion and rigour, of his operatic sensibility and his commitment to creating epics. He isn’t subtle but he always plays for broke. To steal a line from the poet Robert Browning – Sanjay’s reach always exceeds his grasp. That’s what a heaven’s for. This time he doesn’t quite get there.

Padmaavat is offensively chauvinistic, blatantly right-wing, and quite unabashedly anti-Muslim.

It’s pretty and partly absorbing but not quite exhilarating…This Bhansali magnum opus is the kind of film that tries too hard to get your attention in the runtime of almost three hours.

You want a story. You want good dialogue, not the corny words you are hearing.

You want an emotional connect. You want a tighter film.

Sadly, with Padmaavat, that’s not what you get.

The story of a beautiful, faithful queen and a lustful invader who will stop at nothing is told in three very long hours. The costume drama is beautiful and Rajasthan is a great setting for this tale of Rajput valor. But the talk of pride and glory is so endless, it makes you want to run into your sword out of sheer boredom. But Ranveer Singh makes a brilliant hammy villain, and Deepika is luminous.