Movie Review - Devudu Chesina Manushulu (Telugu) – One ticket, Two movies!!

Tokkalanti cinema… Kaadu Kaadu… Tokka nadipina cinema!!

A film without story is akin to a body without soul, and no one likes a dead body. It seems Puri Jagannadh is not aware of this fact. He’s created the much needed hype around the movie calling it an experimental story, err, experiment without a story. He also walked an extra mile saying that successful movies can be made without a STORY. In Devudu Chesina Manushulu, he does the same. Albeit the movie starts on a story-telling note with a socio-fantasical premise where Lord Vishnu narrates/shows a love story of two orphans to Lakshmi Devi, this movie lacks the STORY.  In the end, everyone tries to give their version of climax and makes it hard to stomach.

The screenplay is different but not new to Telugu/South cinema. There’s a 90s movie, Adrustham, starring Naresh, with the same screenplay. In Tamil there are some movies with such a screenplay. Pawan Kalyan starrer Kushi directed by S J Surya, and  Prabhas starrer Darling directed by A Karunakaran; more or less fits in the shoes of this type of screenplay. In Hollywood we’ve got many distant cousins who use such a snowball effect that leads to some unrelated events falling under the ambit of the movie’s screenplay and drive the plot further. I hope John Woo’s Paycheck (*ing Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman) started ringing in your mind.

Puri Jaganaddh’s secret of success is SPEED. May be right from his school days, he’s thrown the quote “Slow and steady wins the race” in a trash bin. He shows lightning speed in script work, casting, execution, wrapping up shooting schedules etc. But he should realize that story development and screenwriting takes time or else what come out of his stable are half-baked bricks such as DCM. Though this film moves at a rapid pace, like every other Puri's film, it leads to loads of confusion.

The movie starts with a note from the director - “Devudunnadani poorthiga nammi ee cinema choodandi...” Avunu sir meeru kuda Devudunnadani, Ilaanti cinemani HIT chesthaadani poorthiga nammi ee cinema teesinatlunnaru..!! The movie’s title has the word “Manushulu,” but none of the character behaves like a “Manishi.” The protagonist of the movie is the BANANA PEEL and is instrumental in showing the audience two movies for the price of one. The rest of the movie is haphazardly set around the series of events that follow – “What happens if you step on a banana peel and what happens if you don’t?”

Ravi Teja’s does the age old act of buffoonery for which he is known for, and Puri has reached saturation in carving a niche to his characters. One can see traces of Prabhas’s character from Ek Niranjan and other past heroes of Puri’s films in Ravi Teja’s character in DCM. Ileana donned a new look but the beauty of Puri’s Ileana can’t be seen here. Again, her character is a photocopy of her role in Nenu Naa Rakshasi. Surprisingly, Prakash Raj's forced to emote and do a lot of over-acting esp. in the sister sentiment scene which's dragged to death perturbing the audience.

Bottom-line: In DCM, both the stories (tokka meeda kaalu vesthe, tokka meeda kaalu veyyakapothe) compete with each other on distastefulness. And the, post interval, pathetic Story 2 effortlessly wins over Story 1 in the first half. Puri shines at places as a dialogue writer, but fails miserably as a director. Apart from the screenplay, that’s partly engaging, and the comedy scenes between Ali and Lord Vishnu & Lakshmi Devi (Again Puri might land into trouble for touching the sensitive issue) there’s nothing worth watching and everything else is run-on-the-mill stuff. The use of a modified version of S S Rajamouli's Chatrapathi's theme in the background gives us some laughs. Watch it if you have nothing else to watch or better watch Julayi again!!

My Review: Expectation - 6/10; Reality - 3/10