Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups Review - A Staggering Emptiness

What happens when the movie serves the star and not the story? No matter how many beautiful women you surround him with, how many bodies he annihilates, how many cigars he smokes, and how many times he calls himself Daddy, the film stumbles before it falls. Toxic: A Fairy Tale For Grown Ups falls in spectacular ways, with hordes of clowns, an army of nuns, and some beautiful Great Gatsby like party girls and boys coming for the hero. And at most times, it just flails, with the protagonist, Raya (Yash), staggering across the screen, drunk or hurt or high on his own adrenaline. He is an orphan brought up in an imagined period Goa, with his sister (Nayanthara) who wants him to become powerful so she doesn’t ever have to be humiliated again.

He becomes a gangster, marries the daughter of another gangster and alienates a henchwoman. Ah, there is a trapeze artist, played with wounded integrity by Kiara Advani. There is also a late entrant, Rukmini Vasanth, trying to reform Yash’s character. So many women, so little time. What you get is beautiful gowns for gorgeous women, some ghosts from the past plaguing Raya, and set pieces costing the GDP of a minor state, and then, like a circus trick, poof, it’s all gone. But not before an interminable running time tests one’s patience.