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.