Peddi Review: Ram Charan Soars, the Film Around Him Stumbles

Few Indian releases this year arrived with as much weight on their shoulders as Peddi. It is Ram Charan's first big outing since a rocky stretch at the box office, a return to rooted storytelling after a glossy misfire, and the second directorial from Buchi Babu Sana, the man behind Uppena. The film hit screens worldwide on 4 June 2026, and three weeks on, the verdict is genuinely split. Some walked out moved; others walked out checking their watches. Both reactions are real, and both deserve a fair hearing.

This is an honest accounting of what works in Peddi and what doesn't, drawn strictly from how critics and ordinary moviegoers have responded. No invented praise, no manufactured outrage.

What Peddi is actually about

The story unfolds across 1994 to 1996 in a marginalised village, where a young tribal man with a gift for cricket runs into a wall of caste prejudice. A village-level tournament becomes the stage where talent and social hierarchy collide. Decades later, a government official starts pulling at the threads of his legacy, giving the film its framing device.

So this is a sports drama, but the sport is really a vehicle. Underneath the cricket lies a story about dignity, discrimination and who gets allowed to dream. That ambition is the most interesting thing about Peddi, and also the source of much of the disappointment, because the film keeps wrestling between that serious core and the demands of a mass commercial vehicle built around a star.

What genuinely works

On one point there is near-consensus: Ram Charan is the reason to watch. Across reviews and audience chatter, his performance is described as physically committed and emotionally invested, the kind of full-body transformation that anchors a film even when the writing wobbles. Many regulars have called it among his most sincere turns to date. When Peddi lands an emotional punch, it is usually because of what he is doing on screen.

A few other elements draw steady praise:

• Cinematography by R. Rathnavelu, which gives the period setting texture and scale.
• The A. R. Rahman soundtrack and background score, used to lift the film's bigger moments.
• Supporting work from Jagapathi Babu, singled out by several viewers, plus the presence of Shiva Rajkumar and Boman Irani in the ensemble.
• Individual stretches, especially in the first half, where the social drama and the sporting underdog arc click into gear.

When people say Peddi works in flashes, this is what they mean. The raw materials are strong, the intent is sincere, and the high points are high.

Where the film stumbles

The most common complaint is simple: it is too long and too uneven. At roughly 190 minutes, the film asks a lot of its audience, and a sizeable chunk of viewers felt the second half sags under repetition and detours. The serious story about caste keeps getting interrupted by familiar commercial beats, hero-elevation moments and tonal swings that pull against the grain of what Buchi Babu Sana seemed to be reaching for.

That tension is the crux of the divide. The viewers who loved Peddi forgave the excess for the emotion. The ones who were let down felt a genuinely powerful premise got buried under length, loudness and a reluctance to trust its own quieter material. Both camps tend to agree the film would have been sharper trimmed by twenty or thirty minutes.

There is also the matter of the romance. The track involving Janhvi Kapoor's character, Achiyyamma, drew criticism well beyond the usual write-the-heroine-better grumbling, and it became the film's biggest talking point off screen.

The controversy that overtook the conversation

Within days of release, a section of audiences online objected to how Kapoor's character was written and shot, with the sharpest anger aimed at one romantic sequence that many viewers described as crossing a line into coercion. The debate spread quickly across social media and entertainment coverage.

The response from the makers was unusually direct. Director Buchi Babu Sana issued a public apology, saying the team had taken the feedback seriously and that cinema should never leave anyone feeling disrespected. Per multiple reports, the film was then re-edited, with a revised cut reportedly playing in cinemas from around 18 June. As with any account of an evolving controversy, the specifics of what was changed are best treated as reports rather than settled fact, and the wider conversation about how the scene should have been handled is still ongoing.

Whatever one makes of the episode, it shaped the film's reception. For a stretch, the discourse around Peddi was less about cricket and caste than about consent and craft.

The box office: a record open, then a hard landing

The commercial story mirrors the critical one, big highs followed by a tougher reality. Peddi delivered one of 2026's largest opening days, with trade trackers reporting it crossed the ₹100 crore worldwide mark on day one. That is an emphatic start by any measure.

The drop, though, came fast. According to box-office tracker Sacnilk, the film's first-week worldwide gross stood at about ₹279 crore, with the India gross around ₹230 crore and overseas near ₹49 crore. By roughly three weeks in, worldwide figures were reported in the ₹330 crore range. Set against a budget widely reported at around ₹300 crore, that places Peddi in awkward middle ground, neither the runaway blockbuster the opening promised nor a disaster. Trade watchers have largely landed on a mixed verdict, with full break-even looking out of reach. Final lifetime numbers remain awaited.

So, is it worth your ticket?

Here is the balanced read. If you go for Ram Charan, the period craft and a couple of genuinely stirring sequences, Peddi has plenty to offer, and the people who connected with it connected hard. If your patience for long, loud, tonally restless commercial cinema is thin, the very things its admirers forgave are likely to wear you down.

What makes Peddi worth talking about is that it tried to be more than a star vehicle and only partly succeeded. A bolder, leaner edit and a more careful hand with its romance might have turned a flawed, fascinating film into a great one. As it stands, the lead performance is the clear winner, the ambition is real, and the gap between what Peddi reaches for and what it grasps is exactly what keeps audiences arguing about it.

For a divisive film, that may be the most honest compliment of all: nobody is indifferent.