Film: Swagatham
Rating: 3/5
Cast: Jagapathi Babu, Anushka, Bhoomika, Arjun, MS Narayana, Sunil, Dharmavarapu, Mallikarjuna Rao, Sarath Babu, Subha, Radhakumari, Rajesh etc
Music: RP Patnaik
Camera: Ramesh Babu R
Producer: Aditya Ram
Story-Screenplay-Director: Dasarath
Released On: 25 Jan 2008
Story:
Sailaja (Anushka) is an event manager in Ram Pasumarthy’s (Benerjee) company in USA. She nurses the son of Sreekanth (Arjun). Sailaja hates Sreekanth a lot for some reason. The reasons will be unleashed later on screen.
KK (Jagapathi Babu) comes as a neighbor for Sailaja along with his daughter.
Sailaja is a girl who is very strict in life style and never spreads a smile on her face as well. KK influences her with his acquaintance that turns into friendship. And Sailaja eventually falls in his love and wishes to marry him knowing that he is a married one. She also assumes that KK had lost his wife. But she learns that she is wrong.
But what is the story of KK? What happened to him with his wife Vidya (Bhoomika)? Why he is away from Bhoomika? Rest of the story unleashes the flash back of KK and ultimately takes to the culmination of sentimental climax.
Performances:
Jagapathi Babu is at his best as usual. He is very good at all histrionics. Anushka is very hot on screen especially in songs. Bhoomika is soft and tender and is perfectly in sink with her character of wedding planner.
Camera work is pretty good but editing appeared to be with a few jerks.
Other departments are ok. Director Dasarath proved once again that he is good at holding sentimental subjects. But this film cannot be compared with his previous hit Santhosham.
RP Patnaik’s music sounds average and there are no haunting tunes. The song that was shot on Jagapathi Babu and Anushka in the direction of Krishna Vamshi is very hot and sensuous. Anushka appeared like a Venus in transparent sari and blouse in that song!
Analysis:
The films like ‘Kal Ho Na Ho’ and ‘Santhosham’ would strike the mind while watching this movie. Although there is no direct relation with those films it stands to be in that genre. Sentiment dominates the film while humor was sprinkled only in first half. Although there are many comedians they aren’t used appropriately. Ravi Babu’s eunuch gestures would appeal for masses while subtle humor in Dharmavarapu Subrahmanyam’s characterization would appeal for both masses and class audiences. On a whole the movie is for female audiences and for those who love watching sentiment. The touching part in the movie lies completely in the climax. But the climax appears to have dragged. In fact there is no other choice left for the director other than establishing the depth in climax. Hence the episode appears to have dragged longer testing the patience of a segment of audiences.
The steering of car appears to be on right side like in India when the story happens to be in USA. Such scenes were seen in 2-3 occasions. Such direction mistakes were observed.
It appears that the songs and a few open air scenes were shot in New York and the rest were managed with library shots. But some scenes were shot in India in the disguise of USA.
The names like Detroit Nageshwara Rao (MS Narayana), Sunil Honda (Sunil) and RV Sunkara (Mallikarjuna Rao) are announced in big way but their roles are very short. They would have used in appropriate way. The scene conceiving for many of comedy scenes didn’t work well. Even Geleel Khan (Ali) also couldn’t make audiences laugh in his standards.
The songs are really a pleasant treat for audiences and Anushka’s beauty pleases everyone in theater. The choreography is also smooth and soft for many songs.
On a whole the film deserves a watch for those who would like to watch a touching sentimental film for a break.
(SiraSri can be reached at [email protected])
