Rating: 2.25/5
Banner: Padmini Arts
Cast: Sumanth Ashwin, Rhea Chakraborty, Naga Babu, Prabhu Ganeshan, Sayaji Shinde and others
Music: Karthik Raja
Cinematographer: S Gopal Reddy
Editor: K V Krishna Reddy
Screenplay, direction: M S Raju
Producer: Maganti Ramachandran
Release date: 20/07/2012
It is time to welcome another kid from the film fraternity and he happens to be the son of the noted producer M S Raju. Whether he made his presence felt or not let us see
Story
Karthik (Sumanth) is the son of cook Ramasamy (Prabhu) and his father is a close friend to Ravinder (Naga Babu) the rich businessman. Ravinder’s daughter Nidhi (Rhea) is an avid animal lover and right from childhood she and Karthik tend to cross swords. One incident takes Nidhi to America and returns after twelve years. Both Karthik and Nidhi are grown-ups and the mischievous young man falls in love with her. However, few of Nidhi’s relatives (Vijayachander, Manisha Yadav, Vinod Kumar) want to get her married into their family so that they can take her property. But Nidhi falls in love with Karthik. Whether their love story becomes successful or not forms the rest of the story.
Performances
Sumanth Ashwin is handsome, energetic and dances well. But he needs to get polished and that will happen with two or three films. Overall, he has shown good potential as a performer.
Rhea Chakraborty is cute, bubbly but it is better she contains her smile as it hampers her expressions. Given her debut act, she is still raw. If she wants to be in south then she has to add some pounds to her slender figure.
Naga Babu was natural, Prabhu did his bit as required. Sayaji Shinde was seen in a different role and he was okay. Manisha Yadav was good as the girl with negative shades. The rest of the cast such as Vijayachander, Parachuri Venkateswara Rao, Seetha, Vinod Kumar, Geetha, Jyothi were there to fill the screen and show some quantity onscreen.
Highlights
- Production values
- Art department
Drawbacks
- Outdated storyline
- Weak direction
- Poor script
- Background score
- Songs
Analysis
As a father, it is justified to see M S Raju’s anxiety to ensure that his son gets the best launch pad but he must also realize that he has got many limitations as a director.
First, you should get your fundamentals right.
Second, you must be sure of who your target audience is and gauge their pulse.
Third, you should have the ability to give the right elevation to the protagonist if that’s what you are aiming.
And when you don’t have those skills, it is always advisable to go for an experienced or skillful director.
Setting up a love story on a backdrop which is far from reality is something which disconnects the audience at the first instant. Okay, there is not much in the plot then what next? The focus should be on having a tight screenplay and mix it with good elements of humour and entertainment. That was missing here.
The other point to note is, if you want to project it as a musical then you should get someone who can infuse the right melody and generate energy through songs. It looked like M S Raju wanted to prove his son is good in all departments and infused all possible scenes wherein he can display varied emotions and skills. That doesn’t really work through a single film and that too with such a flimsy storyline. Trying to do that, the whole product got confusing as you are not sure whether to call it a romantic treat or a musical treat or a family treat.
Overall, the consolation in the film is the production values and two scenes in total- one before interval and one during climax which catches attention. Showing compassion towards animals is good but compassion should be shown on audience as well. Anyways, the film doesn’t have the right energy or punch to be a crowd puller.
Bottomline: Better to watch real ‘Tuneega’ in park than going to the theatre
(Venkat can be reached at [email protected])
