Rating: 1.5/5
Banner: Kumar Brothers Cinema
Cast: Sumanth, Priyamani, Vimala Raman and others
Music: Koti
Cinematography: Jagan
Screenplay, direction: V N Aditya
Producers: Kumar Brothers
Release date: 18/03/2011
The class hero Sumanth has now arrived in a commercial formula treat and this time he has enough ammunition in the form of the heroines Priyamani and Vimala Raman. Let us see how the film is.
Story
Raaj (Sumanth) is a fashion photographer. He loves Priya (Vimala Raman) but he loses her whereabouts and reluctantly gets married to Mythili (Priyamani). But he is unable to tell Mythili about Priya and finds it difficult to adjust with her.
However, things change and they get close. Just when things look to settle, Raj sees Priya. He decides to ask her why she left him without a word and lies to Mythili that he is going to London. Who is Priya? Why does she leave Raaj without a word? What happens to Raaj-Mythili’s relation after Priya’s arrival? All this forms the rest of the story.
Performances
Given his sophisticated looks, Sumanth is a total misfit to this character. He failed in romance, fights, dance and looked disinterested while enacting the emotional scenes. Despite having strong steamy scenes with Priyamani, Vimala Rama he could not deliver that chemistry.
Priyamani goes totally extreme in her skin show and does justice to her remuneration. To be frank, the film will receive any response only due to her severe exposing. However, she should have taken care in the make up and costumes department. Some scenes make her look like a C-grade heroine.
Vimala Raman did her best to ooze glamour but she couldn’t get past Priyamani. But she scored better than Priyamani in the makeup, costumes departments. The flip side is the dubbing for Vimala which reminded of a monotonous TV artist. Already, her performance is weak and the dubbing put her in negative scale.
Srinivas Reddy gives an overdose of adult comedy and Ali has no limits to his flavor of adult comedy. Ajay had nothing to do as a villain. His characterization makes you feel that the old timers Nagabhushanam and Rajanala were much better. The rest of the cast were just for formality sake.
Highlights
- Cinematography
- Locations
Drawbacks
- Terrible songs
- Weak dialogues
- Amateur editing
- Botched up direction
- Obscenity in romance scenes
- Stale twist in second half
Analysis
Despite many attempts, it is clear that Sumanth fits the best for classy roles and is a total misfit for commercial and mass roles.
Either he is being misguided or he is not aware of his own limitations. If only he stuck to classy roles and sophisticated image, he would have got the backing of select audience and could have made his career as a minimum guarantee hero.
‘Raaj’ is one of those masterpieces which belong to the category of torturing the audience in every scene and camera movement.
Right from first scene, the audience goes through third degree torture and becomes a victim of the director’s creativity. The film reminds many of a C-grade Malayalam movie and if you thought that tsunamis happen only in the seas, ‘Raaj’ will give you the experience in cinema theatre.
Bottomline: Beware!! It is a dangerous torture!!
(Venkat can be reached at [email protected])
