20 great movies from the past 20 years: Eega

I’m counting down to the 2025 best-of-the-year season by recommending 20 of my favorite movies from the past 20 years. Here are the previous entries, if you want to catch up:

2005: Caché
2006: Undisputed II: Last Man Standing
2007: Sunshine
2008: Speed Racer
2009: Vengeance
2010: Unstoppable
2011: The Three Musketeers

2012 is when I started to actually track and rank the new releases I watched that year, so it’s the first where I had a list to consult. But my pick for this week isn’t on my best-of-2012 list, because it’s a movie I ended up watching years later: S.S. Rajamouli’s madcap screwball comedy/fantasy epic Eega.

Rajamouli is best known in the states for his breakout global hit RRR, a period piece bromance about battling British colonial rule. He’s the most significant director in modern Indian cinema – certainly by international standards – and is also well known for the Baahubali duology, both historical epics with jaw-dropping scale.

But my favorite of his is Eega, one of the most ridiculous, fun, and creative blockbuster movies I’ve ever seen.

Eega is a go-to for me at parties when someone finds out what I do and asks me for a recommendation. By the time I’m done describing the premise, they’re usually hooked: In Eega a man, after being killed by his romantic rival, is reincarnated as a fly. As a fly, he teams up the woman he was courting to exact revenge on his killer.

You are reading that right. It’s a screwball action comedy about a fly and his human girlfriend annoying a man to death with fly antics.

It’s an extraordinarily fun concept, but Eega is also a technical marvel filled with outstanding VFX shots. The movie’s fly’s face is mostly eyes, and the result is a surprisingly expressive CG insect. (Rajamouli has said the 1986 Pixar short Luxo Jr. was an inspiration).

A fly protagonist also allows Rajamouli’s sense of scale to shine. With such a small protagonist, everything around him is massive – some rushing water becomes a flood, the shoes of a person walking become a kaiju, a falling apple a meteor.

The movie is filled with hilarious physical humor and visual gags, as Rajamouli uses the ridiculous concept to its full potential. The fly has a training montage! He sets up Home Alone-style traps for his enemies! Rajamouli also picks the right moments to pull the camera out of the fly’s point-of-view, zooming out and cutting the music, briefly casting a highly dramatic moment in a comedic light by changing our relationship to the scale.

Eega is truly a movie for everyone, working on multiple fronts – the action hits, the jokes land, and even the romance is well-crafted. Samantha, who plays the woman being pursued by both men, gives her character a lot of life, heart, and grit, and her willingness to throw down alongside her fly boyfriend is a true joy.

Rajamouli reliably creates entertaining blockbuster entertainment, but in my book he hasn’t surpassed the highs of Eega. It’s endlessly fun, delightfully creative, and the kind of movie everyone can have a blast with. You will believe a man can (be a) fly.

Eega is available to rent on YouTube.