Movie Review – Shadow (Telugu) – A kiss with kitsch!!

Suicide note of a cinephile:

Any movie is not extra-ordinary. It boils down to the audience who makes it extra-ordinary. It’s better if directors and writers stop bombarding on social media that their movie is extra-ordinary. Every time when a promotional activity goes overboard, it kills a film rather than saving it. So, my humble request is to stop all the blah blah lines and learn the art of making of a good film.

Of late, it’s difficult to find a decent story line in most of the films even if you look through a telescope. And director Meher Ramesh is a living testimony to this adage. Sir, please make ordinary movies, at least they have some content and story. Don’t trouble the audience every time with a game of Treasure Hunt, err, Story Hunt. You have all the state-of-the-art faculties who can pen down a perfect script. So, use them to their optimum and deliver a palatable meal. 

Always remember that the gloss and candy floss enhances the beauty but don’t make the film beautiful. When you want to make a style sans substance ensemble you are digging your own grave and in this case you are also digging mine. The china pillala comedy you showed on screen, always, hit more and more nails in my coffin. Aa comedy china pillalaki kooda chiraaku teppinchindi. All the CGI, extravagant set design, exotic locales can’t hide poor writing. Loose ends can’t make a tight narration. So, please focus on writing and work on scene composition. By doing this you can also save a lot of suicides from the audience.

Dookudu is just an entertaining film. It’s not a textbook film on which you base your thesis. Please stop emulating the comedian characters or the laughter-induced climax. It worked for it but bombed for all the later films that tread the same path. Can’t you understand the plight of a recent flick that bit the dust by taking the same approach? Oh, I missed a vital link. The writers of all these films are same – Gopi Mohan and Kona Venkat, so no comments. They are stuck in a mold and can’t push the envelope, but their shoddy work will definitely send poor souls like me to gallows.

When an average individual like me can point so many bloopers in the film, why can’t intelligentsia who are part of the crew point them out? A cop sees a criminal running through the grave yard. He can’t see his face but can see the cross he is wearing so clearly that he re-designs it from his memory. Then I expected a Gentleman type connect-the-dots storytelling format. But this clue gets killed midway. The way a new Mercedes E-class pops out in a 1993 scene opens a bundle of anachronisms. And sir please, a medical doctor is a psychiatrist and not a psychologist. I don’t know how a psychiatrist can be a postmortem or autopsy specialist. Doctor friends please help me break this enigma. Suicidal tendency grows with every passing scene.

A major reason for my suicide – I couldn’t see my favorite hero ‘Victory’ Venkatesh in such a disastrous role. Meher Ramesh promised that he will re-invent Venky and show us a new him. Kaani prapramchamlo intha chandaalamayina image make-over evaru chesundaru. Thanks sir. We shower all the accolades on you and bestow all the available honors on you for killing our star. You played with our senses and made us forget who the hero is? At times, we thought M S Narayana is the hero and not Venky. OMG, why should Venky fall on youngsters – Mahesh, Pawan, NTR and Prabhas – always in the comedy scenes? That’s another yaaaak moment. That’s the genius of Meher Ramesh. He was not economical in terms of production, but was economical in dressing, err, undressing Tapsee.

The one who hit the final nail in my coffin is music director (for lack of a better term we are still bound to call him that) S S Thaman. The same title track was repeated to death and to boredom of audience all through the film. Ee vetakaaraniki malli Auro 3D 11.1 sound ane prachaaram. My question – when you have only one track to play all through the film why the hell you need 11 channels.

Bottom-line: Paina raasinave chaala ekkuva. Inka naaku opika ledu. Ayinaa chaava boye mundu chivari maata – Gaalini muttukoleru , Mantanu tattukoleru ee Shadow ni choodaleru.

P.S. Please share this suicide note with everyone who wants to watch Shadow. And, my obituary will be published at the time of the release of Shadow 2.

My Rating: Expectation – 6/10; Reality – 3/10