Rating: 2.5/5
Banner: Sri Sailendra Cinemas
Cast: Varun Sandesh, Sanchita Padukone, Catherine Tresa, Srinivas Avasarala, Vennela Kishore and others
Music: Kiran Varanasi
Cinematographer: Ranganath Gogineni
Editor: Nagi Reddy
Story, screenplay, direction: Neelekanta
Producer: Master Bujji Babu
Release date: 15/02/2013
National award winner Neelekanta is back and this time he has chosen something different to entertain the audience. Whether he is successful or not let us see.
Story:
Kishore (Srinivas Avasarala) is an aspiring moviemaker and in his search for a proper love subject he comes across lecturer Apparao (Sayaji) who shares with him the love tale of Shyam (Varun) and Anshu (Sanchita), students in his college.
They get engaged and marriage is due in 6 months, Shyam gets a job and goes to Bangalore.
There he meets Sunaina (Catherine) who is more like his dream girl. This gives rise to few complications and what happens after that forms the rest of the tale.
Performances:
Nothing new has come from Varun Sandesh. Barring those 2-3 standard expressions and his anglicized dialogue delivery, not much to look from him, it is about time he stops being stereotype and doing stale stuff.
Sanchita Padukone is not much of a looker. She has decent confidence in front of camera but except the side angles and her smiles, she cannot catch attention.
Catherine is the life and soul of this movie. In fact, it is only after her entry that the film gets into some momentum and makes things interesting. She has the potential to grow big.
Srinivas Avasarala is a talent who needs to be explored, he deserves more opportunities. Sayaji Shinde was standard. Vennela Kishore was outright hilarious, he is too good in roles like these. Chinmayi was hardly there but she is also a good option to check out. Surekha Vani was alright. Brahmaji looked too young to be a father. The rest did their bit as required.
Highlights:
- Catherine Tresa
- Second half
- Screenplay
- Chandamama Tho.. song
Drawbacks:
- First half
- Varun’s styling and look
- Background score
- Dialogues
Analysis:
Neelekanta is called as the king of script writing and a master in screenplay, that has always been his strength and the other plus is, the subjects he chooses is quite interesting dealing with human psychology and relationships. Here again, he has attempted something similar but this time there is a difference. Neelekanta has adopted the masala ingredient and he has induced few elements which will appeal to the youth and commercial audience.
All said and done, it is important that a story needs to have the right kind of energy and support from other departments like music, production values etc. that way, though he had good content and material in his subject, he could not conceive it to the fullest level of audience satisfaction. The problem is that the first half lacks in tempo and background score marred it a lot. The actual interest for the audience starts from just a few minutes before interval.
Especially, the film takes off on a rather mild note and the first half is rather slow with certain sequences being quite contradictory to logic and reasoning. Well the director tagged the line ‘love ki logic ledu’. But that doesn’t mean that he can shun the logic of film narration as well. And even at the climax part, it’s no way convincing why a young man should accept a girl who holds his shirt and demands widening her eyes, “You should keep begging mercy from me for ever”. In fact, the hero does no harm to her. At such moment where audiences get irritated by the heroine’s attitude, hero accepts her love. And there ends the film.
Not sure why Neelekanta felt Varun can do justice to this role. However, the second half made up for all setbacks with a good pace, sizzle and some emotional depth. The strokes of his brilliance were seen in few places but not everywhere.
And except ‘Chandamamtho Kundela..’ no tune has youthful appeal in it.
In fact, this film can be watched by the teens those relish the beauty of Catherine and some lighter and heavy moments of love.
Bottomline: Not as jazzy as the title
(Venkat can be reached at [email protected] or https://twitter.com/greatandhranews)
