Rating: 1.5/5
Banner: Shirdi Sai Combines
Cast: Mahat Raghavendra, Piaa Bajpai, Archana Kavi, Sarath Babu, Ali, Brahmanandam and others
Dialogues: Lakshmi Bhupal
Music: Sunil Kashyap
Songs: Sirasri, Lakshmi Bhupal
Cinematographer: G K Prasad
Editor: Dharmendra Kakarala
Story, screenplay, direction: Madhura Sreedhar
Producer: Dr MVK Reddy
Release date: 15/03/2013
It is not a rule that those who don’t study cannot come up in life, there are many who were not educated sufficiently but reached great heights. Madhura Sreedhar’s attempt was to convey the same through this film. We have seen many flicks in that genre but by putting an attractive title ‘Back Bench Student’ and revealing that the student failed 16 subjects, he managed to raise curiosity. Let us see if he made the film in such an interesting way.
Story
Karthik (Mahat) is not interested in studies and he fails in 16 subjects in engineering. His girlfriend Priyanka (Archana) goes to US for doing her MS. Though he is not good in studies, Karthik is good in ethical hacking and with the help of his friend Chaitra (Piaa) he gets a job in her company. Karthik and Chaitra fall in love. But Priyanka returns to India discontinuing her MS to get back to Karthik. Who will Karthik choose forms the rest of the story.
Performances
Mahat doesn’t have Hero features. The director must have felt a hero is not required and Mahat will be a good fit. Keeping aside his physique, looks he needs to have the skill of acting. But if he goes to an acting school Mahat will definitely be a ‘Backbench Student’ there.
Both heroines are okay. More than Piaa Bajpai, the performance of Archana Kavi is better.
Ali did his best to do justice to the role but he was not given the right scenes or dialogues to bring humor.
Brahmanandam came in climax and tried something like comedy. Audience has seen him thousands of times and there are rarely instances when they get irritated with him. That rare instance has happened through his character ‘Kareena Kapoor’ in the film. Both audience and Brahmi had a tough time in this attempt to comedy.
Sarath Babu, Pragathi, Banerjee did standard parents characters. The artists who worked as friends of the hero and heroines did a good job.
Highlights
- There might be something in the backbench
Drawbacks
- All benches in front of backbench got filled with them
Analysis
Generally people becoming ‘something to something’ stories tend to attract. Someone who is useless achieving something big is definitely acceptable and ‘achievers’ stories are always inspiring. The point that Sreedhar chose has material but the narrative was not appealing.
The poor screenplay led to total boredom from start to finish. None of the characters were developed properly. Everything happens quickly. There is no spice in the romance track between hero and heroine. It is all about him failing 16 subjects and the second love track also goes stale. Here, the routine heroine was made an orphan and her love towards orphans locks the heart of the hero. There is no valid reason why he left the girl he loved for 4 years. The less we speak about romantic track the better. No words can also describe the ‘talent’ of hero’s hacking. Instead of making it a routine end, an attempt was made to satisfy audience using Brahmanandam but they expected something and result was something else.
You might get tempted to run away watching Brahmi’s comedy. There is no point in the cinema wherein we can connect or smile heartily. There is not a scope for even grace marks. Even the technical team didn’t contribute. Director must be held responsible because he failed to extract work from them rightly. Having experience of making two films, he should have known what to expect from his team.
Dialogues are very bad. Words have been written just to fill the scenes. Sometimes background score gives some life but Sunil Kashyap made a mess of the whole film.
Everywhere he created noise even when unwanted and tested the patience of the audience. One can dedicate two full pages to explain how pathetic his background score was.
Nothing much in cinematography, editing, they were mechanical. Sreedhar had many backlogs in script stage and he could not do a convincing work. Overall, the student turns out to be hopeless and proves he does not qualify to pass.
Bottomline: This student ‘tests’ your patience
(Venkat can be reached at [email protected] or https://twitter.com/greatandhranews)
