Movie Review - Galipatam (Telugu) - A new age love story!!

In recent times, Telugu cinema has witnessed some new age love stories. They were either too trendy or too far-fetched to be plausible, and it’s needless to say about oodles of double entendre that fill the film’s template. Many operated in the mold of commerciality and the truth, which such movies wanted to convey, was hidden deep under multiple layers of gloss. Galipatam tries to break that jinx with a fresh treatment of love, marriage, family and how far can anyone go in resurrecting their strained relationships. All these were brought to good effect with a subtle dose of sugar and spice.

Karthi (Aadi) and Swathi (Erica Fernandes) get into the wedlock recently. For the world, they are the best couple, but on the flipside, they are brimming with indifferences and marital woes. The story slides back to their past where Karthi has a fling with Parineeti (Kristina Akhheva), which couldn’t last long owing to their contrasting viewpoints about the institution of marriage; and Swathi has a staunch admirer in the form of Arav Reddy (Rahul Ravindran), whose loves gets rejected as the former is a non-believer of love and is inclined towards an arranged marriage. The rest of the story is about the overplaying emotions, twists and turns in their life’s journey and how they deal with it.

At times, Galipatam suffers with a heavy Bollywood hangover. There are some shades of films such as Shaadi Ke Side Effects, Desi Boyz, Love Aaj Kal et al. Some scenarios may give you a feeling of déjà vu and the youth may instantly connect and emote with this film, and few dull moments get a proper seasoning to look alive and kicking. The film culminates into a heated and over-stretched debate of clash of generations and their attitudes. Just at this place, it inches into a preaching zone but the director adeptly pulls it off to dish out an unconventional ending.

Aadi shuns his regular avatar and flies high with a refreshing look and restrained performance. Erica does a tight rope walk by juggling between the roles of a comely lover and a demanding wife. She is a bundle of talent. Kristina looks promising and her histrionics justify her lovable returned-from-Canada character. However, Rahul Ravindran’s role is limited and he fills the gaps with an understated performance. It would have been better if they had delved into a little more of his story. The supporting cast also fetches brownie points as their stories turn crucial for the film.

Galipatam is a dauntless attempt by Naveen Gandhi to bring to the fore the grim realities of life, albeit in a sugar-coated way. The razor sharp dialogue of Sampath Nandi brings the house down alongside rolling few tears down your cheek. The film balances every aspect of relationships and presents the views of everyone. The character sketches, emotions and proper reasoning to every strange scene make it a high-flier. Though few comic scenes are blown out of proportion, they are plugged in to satiate the formulaic requirements of the script and clear the air of emotions to play it to the gallery. 

My Rating: Expectation - 5/10; Reality - 6/10

This review was originally written for Metro India newspaper.

Movie Review - Maaya (Telugu) - Fails to cast a spell..!!

National award winning director Neelakanta always tries to walk against the grain and his quest for uncommon storylines is never ending. If one could draw a pattern from his previous films, he plants a disorder in his protagonists, and this has become his obsession. However, in Maaya he is confused, in turn confusing audience, whether the trace of visions that surmount the lead character is actually a disorder or a gift.

The director picks a novel concept of ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) – when I say novel, it’s only for Telugu cinema because this thing has been explored in Hindi and Malayalam, and needless to say about Hollywood. He doesn’t stop there and adds a dash of emotional drama and elements of crime to the main plot and force-fits it in the Tollywood storytelling template.

The movie begins with a quote of Sadhguru. Meghana (Avantika Mishra) is a victim of a tainted past where she loses her mother by not paying heed to her superpower. She is a television reporter and falls head over heels for a fashion designer Siddharth Varma (Harshavardhan Rane), who is in town for research work on his upcoming fashion show. Her ability to foresee deaths comes to the fore again and this time she manages to save the probable victims. While she is on her way to propose love, she bumps into her childhood friend Pooja (Sushma Raj) who discloses about her relationship with Siddharth and their marriage which is on cards. A lovelorn Meghana checks all the buttons on melodrama and also gets to see the grey shades of Siddharth in one of her visions. Then the film leans to the side of a crime thriller.

Maaya suffers badly because of a wrong casting call. Avantika is not made for this genre. She is callous to most of the fearsome moments and her dubbed voice sounds more than her age. You can’t emote to her condition as it’s not visible through her expressions. Just a tear drop wouldn’t do. For Harshavardhan, this is arguably the toughest role to pull off, which he does justice to an extent. The supporting cast is a big letdown as neither Nagababu nor Jhansi could understand the gravity of the situation and end up offering lame advices. However, Sushma holds the pieces of the later half together and offers lot of promise.

The first half looks like a soap opera with television like framings. The visions of the heroine pave way to some predictable stuff. The audience expects a Paycheck like spin-off and lot of spine-chilling moments, but not even one satiates their wants. The core concept fizzles out in the second half and the slipshod storytelling adds more nails to the coffin. The only saving grace is the background score of Sekhar Chandra. 

Maaya fails to cast a spell on the audience. It’s a thriller sans thrill elements. The half-baked psychological thriller devolves into a murder mystery, and the latter outshines the concept of ESP that was marketed as the USP of the film. If you are a smart alec you can foresee the big climactic twist and even that earth-shattering one is a rip-off from a popular Hindi film from the 90s. Now, that’s the audience getting a sense of ESP!

My Rating: Expectation - 8/10; Reality - 4/10

This review was originally written for Metro India newspaper.

Movie Review - Run Raja Run (Telugu) - Fun Unlimited!!

The moment of truth for director Sujeeth has finally arrived. After making innumerable short-films, he ventures into a full length feature for a bigger screen and a larger audience with his flick Run Raja Run. He effortlessly tries to dish out an RGV-esque cool crime comedy, and at places even outsmarts him. This is a test for audience’s intelligence, which the film-maker tries to poke at regular intervals. And movies like these are a film critic’s delight.

Run Raja Run adopts a divisional screenplay and both the plots run on parallel lines till the interval. This type of narration sparks off your thinking faculty to draw some imaginative lines connecting the dots. With your predictions you try to get closer to the reality on screen and rack your brains as how both the tracks merge? However, in this film many such guesses take a U-turn. One track is a romantic comedy involving Raja (Sharwanand) and Priya (Seerath Kapoor) and the other revolves around a series of kidnaps in the town and commissioner of police Dilip Kumar’s (Sampath) constant efforts to bring the criminals to book.  

The beauty of the narrative technique is that the road taken at the beginning branches out into a different terrain. The twists are perfectly peppered all through the film and those popping out during the interval and the pre-climax stage keep you on the edge. The film stands as an experiment to bring world cinema closer home in terms of storytelling and patching up different subplots that culminate into an emotional and expect-the-unexpected kind of climax. Don’t mistake it with a Venkat Prabhu film, where the jokes come first and the plot much later.   

Sharwanad gets a complete makeover and surprises everyone with his great performance. He combines his innocence from Amma Cheppindi with street smartness from Ko Ante Koti. What a fine actor he is. Seerat Kapoor is like a whiff of fresh air and glitters with a radiant smile and twinkle in her eye. Sampath wears a comic tinge on his rugged cop avatar and stands out with a near perfect act. Adivi Sesh pulls off his role with poise. 

Director Sujeeth climbs up many notches to make a quality caper film with a thrilling screenplay, witty dialogue, adept camerawork, well-choreographed dance numbers, stellar performances, and refreshing background score and music. Fortunately for him they all come out as aces. Madhie’s cinematography is excellent in the way he frames his romantic sequences and the manner in which he uses his camera to travel around in frantic situations. Ghibran’s music is an integral part of the film and it blends into the narration elevating key scenes. This composer is a bundle of talent traversing across different sounds and tracks.

Going with Sujeeth’s past outings as a short-film maker, Run Raja Run is more hilarious than expected. First half is an entertaining marathon. The momentum dips a little in the second half, where you also find few loose ends, but the fun and emotions are carried well. The final showdown and emotional block stands as a high point. Though at places the film looks like a bag of borrowings, it transcends many genre conventions and evolves as an uncanny thriller with a right concoction of situational comedy, romance, drama sans the physical confrontations, which are typical of a commercial Telugu film. 

Run Raja Run is fun and frolic meets flair and flamboyance. 

My Rating: Expectation - 6/10; Reality - 7/10

This review was originally written for Metro India newspaper.

Movie Review - Alludu Seenu (Telugu) - As bad as it gets!!

Many a time you see a Telugu film, operating in the commercial zone, that resets the template and then for many years, everyone blatantly copies its tricks of trade. So there’s a time-tested formula, but for how long will it be forced upon the audience to test their patience. More than entertainment, the movie watching becomes a game to find the original movie or the scene from which it has been inspired or copied. Alludu Seenu does nothing magical than stick to the template. Don’t be surprised when you see Gudumba Shankar, Aadi, Cheli, Ready, Raccha, Dookudu, Adhurs – and hold your breath – Argo rolled into one. In simple terms, it’s V V Vinayak trying to pull off a Sreenu Vytla.

I feel rather than revealing the plot, it’s better to detail the format of such films. A happy-go-lucky orphan hero flees from his hometown. He moves to a city and bumps into a villain and his daughter, at different instances. How cinematic! Without waiting for a minute, he falls head over heels for her. Alongside he schemes with his sidekicks to make some moolah.

All hell breaks loose when he is pitted against heavyweights in the crime world and an imminent flashback episode seeps in post interval. Now, with the entire world turned against him, the hero has to do so many things – get the girl, teach a lesson the villain, regain the lost glory of his family. All this is done by oozing loads of comedy and glamour screen. Just remember, our heroes never lose their cool and can deal even the serious situations with silly antics.

Alludu Seenu is a routine fare with not an ounce of freshness in it, but there are couple of jokes which crackle and few songs which sparkle. At times, the plot tries to make sense by touching issues such as Fluorosis problem in the district of Nalgonda. However, they are fleeting and the required emotion couldn't get carried all through. The music and camerawork are just in place, and nothing exceptional to write home about them. The beautiful city of Sharjah has been restricted to shoddy CG work that only shows the sandy deserts.

Bellamkonda Sreenivas tries to show some promise, but only in dances and fights. I wish he learns to flex his facial muscles. Samantha falls prey to another poorly etched role. Prakash Raj offers no variation for both his roles. Both the characters lack a proper fixation of their behavioral traits. Samantha's Anjali, in the beginning, wants her would be husband to pass some irreverent tests, but in the later half she's ready to accept anyone! Prakash Raj's Narasimha takes off as an ingenuous person and ends up being an ingenious one. The movie showcases many fatal lapses from scripting to execution stage.

And when in doubt, it’s only Brahmanandam who can steer a foundering ship to the shore. For the sake of entertainment, the antagonist and his henchmen are limited to a bunch of buffoons before the hero. Why they wear glares in their homes... argh! If that’s not all, you may get into the shoes of the bride from Kill Bill when you see the last song placed after a poorly constructed Argo-esque dramatic escape sequence. That’s riding on the rut of formula.

Director V V Vinayak makes a movie that has been seen before and stretched to death, without either the skill or spirit that distinguished its decent predecessors. Alludu Seenu remains as a string of scrapes and never departures from archetypal commercial conventions. It doesn't attempt to do anything except pass the time, which simply isn't good enough when most of us have access to other forms of entertainment. 

The film is an epitome of too many actors and technicians laying hands to deliver a menial mishmash of a launch vehicle for the Bellamkonda scion. 

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

This review as originally written for Metro India newspaper.

An edited version of this piece can be found here.

Movie Review - Icecream (Telugu) - Another chink in RGV's armour!!

Since a longtime, there has been a question that’s making people sleepless more than the spooky elements in an RGV film. How does he convince producers to fall in the line of fire? Many a time we see him dishing out the same story with different cast and this time with Icecream, which is promoted as “Fear is hot” he gets into a repeat mode with the same story that’s done to death and the same scene that travels in a loop. That’s Varma hitting a new low.

Icecream is yet another film that hovers on the theme of a haunted house and a girl trying to stay put all the night amid ghosts or, as they call in the film, illusions of ghosts. She believes them initially but later on denies their existence and labels it as some disorder. Though the film-maker says the story (if at all there’s any) is inspired from a real life incident, it seems like a thread woven by taking cues from 1 Nenokkadine. Renu (Tejaswi) is the gal here and she wants her friend Vishal (Navadeep) to believe her story. So does he believe and are there any ghosts or just illusions forms the flimsy plot.

The main culprit for Icecream is the narrative mode that makes it too predictable. The same mirror reflections, at times the Psycho shower scenes, callous supporting cast who try to pump some fear with their expressions, and above all, an illogical justification for the film’s title. So our protagonist has only three things to do: take a shower, eat icecream and romance the guy – all under the pretext of studying. When these things get into a time warp after frequent intervals, you tend to kill yourself before the ghost kills someone on screen.

One thing to fancy about the film is RGV’s new-found love for flowcam. This one is touted as the future of cinematography and is aptly used in this film. There’s a seamless flow of visuals as this cam allows for long shots. However, the uncanny camera angles of the director stay till eternity with any technology he embraces. The visuals are coupled with flow-sound technique, which’s another new for this film. With an impeccable sound design, most of the simple scenes are fine tuned for an immersible experience. The credits are also done differently.

The publicity for the film was sky high and everyone walked into cinema with loads of excitement. Alas! This film could be another RGV product that won’t satiate his fans or regular audience alike. If he does the same again and again, with all these chinks his armour may soon get crushed. Every time people watch his films expecting them to be his best works and for many, including me, there’s still a ray of hope that the genius in this film-maker may take a rebirth. Till that time, you can stay away from this Icecream, which makes you laugh rather than scream!

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

This review was originally written for Metro India newspaper.

An edited version of this piece can be found here.

Movie Review - Drushyam (Telugu) - A genre defying film!!

Family drama interspersed with thrilling elements may sound new or different, at least for the Tollywood landscape. You might expect a multi-layered thriller with many intriguing sub-plots, but all you get to see a simple storyline in a linear format, which rides high on the drama quotient. Some may call it a new genre or no genre, and few may term it as a genre-defying stint. This narrative pattern has been effortlessly portrayed by Sripriya on the celluloid in her directorial venture Drushyam, which is a remake of a Malayalam namesake.   

Most of the key elements of the film are borrowed from the Malayalam original. The buildings, the architecture, the production design and even the natural surroundings are recreated to relive the same experience. So, if you have not seen the original, this may call for a different experience, and if you seen the Malayalam version, still it’s a great watch for the thunderous performance of Venkatesh and Nadhiya. Though a faithful remake, this version comes with some local baggage to appease the crowds. Moreover, it carries the tag of an intelligent family drama, which keeps the movie afloat.

Director Sripriya never let the movie slip out of her hands. The movie goes through a heavy patchwork later on, so as to cover few dull moments and bring the audience into the world of inevitable emotional highs and lows. The first half takes a back seat with a relaxed narration creating the mood and ambiance for the film and as it inches towards the interval the few characters and convolutions pave way for a well construed mystery. The director could have got some blame for making a frame-to-frame copy. However, the gripping screenplay and overblown drama make you enjoy the product rather than finding similarities and flaws.

Drushyam creates a fun-filled milieu with its lead characters that are not well educated and belong to a middle-class family. As the film progresses, these initial fixations help them to get a proper character arc. Venkatesh playing a naïve Rambabu takes the path of truth and when he is drained out of all the options to shield his family’s righteousness, he imbibes an opportunistic trait as it’s the need of the hour. Similarly, the character of Geetha is initially adamant to learn the truth about her son, but later on when she untangles the mesh of events, her fragile core comes to the fore. 

Despite some illogical constructions, Drushyam flies high for the way it showcases the eternal scuffle between being correct and being correct in the books of law. It stands as a reflection of a common man in the most uncommon scenarios – some simple and some utterly cinematic. The high point for Drushyam is telling so much of a story with very few characters. All this is backed by stellar performances of the actors and a watertight narration. If you are looking for any other high points, then the entire film stands tall as a high point. 

My Rating: Expectation - 6/10; Reality - 7/10

This review was originally written for Metro India newspaper.

An edited version of this piece can be found here.

Movie Review - Ra Ra Krishnayya (Telugu) - Another 'free'make bites the dust

Ra Ra Krishnayya extends the legacy of freemakes or unofficial remakes in Tollywood. The main plot and most of the scenes are borrowed from Riteish Deshmukh – Genelia starrer Tere Naal Love Ho Gaya, which in turn is an adaptation of a Danny Boyle Rom-Com fantasy A Life Less Ordinary. Good that the Hindi and Telugu versions didn’t induce the fantasy aspect of the original. Now, you can’t simply remake a Hindi film into Telugu, you need to customize it according to the tastes of local audience. Just here, the film misfires giving a déjà vu of many films that adorned this land. Even after such effort, it contains a lot of Bollywood flavor throwing the viewers in a ‘disconnect’ mode.

Krishna / Kittu (Sundeep Kishan) is a cab driver in Chennai. Though they said Chennai, every location seemed like a studio construction and most of the outdoor shoot happened in Hyderabad. Kittu wants to grow big in life by starting a car rental service of his own. He approaches his owner Manikyam (Tanikella Bharani) – again a guy with an irritating Tamil accent – to get back his savings of 6 lakhs, which the latter denies to give. Now with a fit of rage, Kittu accidentally kidnaps Manikyam’s daughter Nandeeswari (Regina). She enjoys Kittu’s company as she is unhappy with her father’s decision to marry her to a buffoon. Kittu and Nandiswari travel together and plunge into some tricky situations to leave a little scope for so called twists.

All through the first half, director Mahesh forcefully paints an Imtiaz Ali tinge to the happenings. A deliberate attempt to make it a Road film goes haywire. Of course, you can’t make a Jab We Met or a Highway with this kind of set up. So, it ends up as a domineering girl who takes control of the situation where the kidnapper has nothing much to do rather than follow her instructions. One can clearly call Regina as the hero in the first half. And when the movie slides into the second half, it’s all Jagapathi Babu who dons an avatar of a comedian. Although it didn’t suit him to the core, he manages to pull off few gags. So he can be called the hero there.

Now the question is… What happened to hero Sundeep? He couldn’t make his presence felt in even one scene. The director tries a new format of story-telling wherein he rolls serious and silly tone in once scene. Sundeep tried to lighten such scenes, but every time the heroine or the supporting cast took away the brownie points. After a hit like Venkatadri Express, it’s unpalatable to see this young hero in a caricatured role which holds no promise or surprise.

Music by Achu is getting bland with each passing film. He uses one track, with slight tweaking, for every scene – comedy, emotion, chase et al. The way the songs are recorded makes you go deaf for the vocals. The camera work was experimental though, as most of the shots were taken from different angles. This was another saving grace along with the actress Regina, who was vivacious with a worldly charm.

Ra Ra Krishnayya is an unimaginative, shoddy rehash where everything is force fed to the audience. Every character comes for a sojourn making the journey aimless. The entire Kerala episode is blown out of proportion. The film is loaded with many unanswered questions and in this wafer-thin plot you can never find logic. If the director wants us to buy such a concept, then we have much better options. Or simply, we can watch a Ready or a Mirchi on DVD.  

My Rating: Expectation - 6/10, Reality - 3/10

This review was originally written for Metro India newspaper.