Movie: Bethaludu
Rating: 2.5/5
Banner: Fathima Vijay Antony Films
Cast: Vijay Antony, Arundhati Nair, Charuhasan, Meera Krishnan, Y. G. Mahendra, Remya Nambeesan, Siddhartha Shankar, Kamal Krishna and others
Music: Vijay Antony
Cinematography: Pradeep Kalipurayath
Editing: Veera Senthil Raj
Producers: Venugopal, Rohith
Story and Direction: Pradeep Krishnamoorthy
Release date: December 1, 2016
With the surprise hit of 'Bichchagadu', Tamil actor Vijay Antony has become hottest star in Tollywood. 'Bichchagadu' collected nearly Rs 20 Cr in Telugu market and the trailer of 'Bethaludu' also piqued the interest and raised the expectations.
Moreover, the team released 10 minutes of the movie before the release. So it further created good buzz around the movie. Has film lives up to this entire buzz?
Story:
Dinesh (Vijay Antony) is software professional working in Hyderabad. He gets married to a girl Aishwarya (Arundhati Nair) who contacts him through a matrimonial website. He gets to hear strange voices in his body.
A psychiatrist hypnotizes him and takes him to the time of his last birth. In his last birth he was a teacher called Sharma in Macharla. He adopts a boy and lives with them. A young girl Jayalakshmi joins his school and soon he asks her to marry him despite huge gap between their ages.
After their marriage, Jayalakshmi gets attracted to another young teacher. She kills him with the help of his lover over an issue. Now, in the present time, that Jayalakshmi is born as his wife Aishwarya. Sharma who is in the body of Dinesh would kill her now? What is the twist?
Artistes’ Performances:
Vijay Antony is suited perfect to the roles of Dinesh and Sharma. He has pulled off both the roles with ease. He has limited acting skills and he is cleverly selecting roles that suit to his talent.
Arundhathi Nair has given her best. In other roles, the guy who played doctor and YG Mahendran shine.
Technical Excellence:
The film has terrific background score that is done by Vijay Antony himself. Cinematography and artwork is competent. Dialogues by Bashya Sri are neat.
Highlights:
First half
Suspense element
Background score
Drawback:
Out rightly silly climax
Slow narration
Complete contrast second half
Analysis:
The reason why "Bichchagadu" became such a big hit was the unique story and narration though it is basically mother-son sentiment drama. The way it was packaged made all the difference.
As "Bethaludu" begins to unravel the story, audiences would get impression that he has got it right again. The movie begins on a strong note by directly coming into the story without any deviation and keeping the suspense well.
The first half is terrifically shot with riveting drama and engaging screenplay. At "Viramam" (interval) bang, we feel that a superb thriller is in store. But all that good work is undone by the contrast second half.
In the first half, the story is set up as a psychological thriller or rebirth-revenge drama. In the second half, the disclosure is opposite to this. This revelation is not all convincing and has spoiled the show. From here, movie has completely gone out of hands of the director. All the mood the director created with his narration, Vijay Antony with his acting as well as background score has gone for the toss thereafter.
And the climax makes us feel indifferent to it. A typical mass-movie kind of fight sequence is thrown in all of a sudden. The reason why heroine married him in the first place and why she is harassed in the second half is not answered well.
"Bethaludu" is like half-boiled biryani rice, cannot be savored however beautiful it looks. All in all, the movie has superb first half but cliched final scenes which gives us unsatisfactory feel in the end.
Bottom-line: Half-Thrill!
