There is only one word to describe this movie “meandering”. The rest of this review is not to describe the movie, but for me to justify why I call it meandering.
There is no theme to the movie. Based on the posters, and the fact that it was a Trisha – Venkatesh movie, and the posters don’t even hold a hint of any actor other than these two, I was expecting a light hearted romantic comedy. With Selvaraghavan directing it, my hopes for three hours of entertainment were extremely high. I read some reviews that compared this movie to “Nuvvu Naaku Nachav” which was a hilarious movie. After waiting and watching for several days for tickets to become available, I finally found tickets on Sunday afternoon, and entered the theatre fully I prepared to enjoy myself.
They started off showing the difficult relationship between Venkatesh and Kota Srinivasa Rao (who plays his father) which was OK, given the fact that Venkatesh’s character is supposed to be someone who can’t land a single job after trying for 10 years. He depends on his father for pocket money. One day he (Venkatesh; not Kota) runs into Trisha, who is a software engineer at some company. In a delightfully old-fashioned way (I guess due to his age), he falls in love at first sight, before exchanging a single word with her. He is motivated to join her company and after a herculean effort he manages to land a job as a programmer in her company.
I hated the way the software engineering company aspect of this movie was handled. Trisha, a project manager in the company, is his “trainer” but does not spend even one second on a computer. Files are literally large binders of papers. Everyone yells at everyone. Their boss is mad at the two of them after Venkatesh brings the whole system crashing down. How he managed to do that is beyond me. Despite this, and the fact that he has no skills whatsoever, he spends all night in the office and manages to complete the project!!! And shows the results to Trisha on a dot-matrix paper printout!!! Please!!!
This is the beginning of the end of logic in this movie. Despite the near debacle on the project, and lack of even basic communication skills in English, Venkatesh is sent on a “foreign” assignment with Trisha along with two other people to Australia. They spend all their time in pubs and after an unnecessary scene, in which Trisha gets drunk, and another song, Venkatesh ends up declaring his love for her.
She rejects him and says that her family is different and Venkatesh does not know anything about her. Frankly, given the way Trisha is shown as a shrew and a completely intolerant person, I am amazed anyone could fall in love with her character, despite her obvious beauty.
So, Anyway, adding another completely implausible element to the plot, SelvaRaghavan (what were you thinking, dude?) makes Venkatesh’s dad go and plead with Trisha. Trisha insults him and he gets a heart attack and dies. Venkatesh is heart-broken and depressed, and to cheer him up, his friend Vasu asks him to go to his village where he is getting married. Venkatesh reluctantly agrees, and we come to know that, wait for it, Trisha is Vasu’s fiancé. How can Vasu not know that his fiancé and best friend work in the same company, and the “Keerti” that Venkatesh is talking about has the same name as his fiancé who works in the same office? I am really tired of this kind of trite co-incidences in Hindi and Telugu movies. When your best friend finally gets a job after trying for 10 years, wouldn’t you be curious to know which company he works at?
When the level of irritation at this kind of stupidity reaches its height, you are treated to a break, courtesy the interval. Phew!
We were sorely tempted to leave this sorry mess of a film at this point. Trust me, even if you find the plot so far palatable, it is because it only took you about 2 minutes to read it. If it had taken you one and a half years, I mean hours, to watch it, you would think differently. But another round of popcorn and soda (this time to give us something to do with our hands while we watch) we meandered back into the theatre.
From this point on the movie is truly unbearable. Every scene is “inspired” by some other movie, the whole Hum Aapke Hain Kaun inspired extended family is there, and the bodily-function humour is way out there and insults the human intelligence. What was K. Viswanath doing in this movie? I would not want this character he played to be my grandfather. And from here on, Trisha’s behaviour becomes totally incomprehensible. Although difficult in the first half, at least you could accept a high achiever like her not really liking Venkatesh’s loser type character, but in the second half, her character undergoes a complete change. The ending, in trying to be different, is just too much of a relief – not for the story or the movie, but for us – because the movie has finally come to an end.
Music was good. Trisha was cute. Venkatesh tried hard, he really did. Kota Sreenivasa Rao is one of my favourite character actors, and given his limited scope he acted really well. But for the life of me, I cannot recommend this movie to anyone. It goes all over the place – there is not one original scene in the movie, there is no connection between the various sub plots, I could go on and on and on. Oh wait, I have J
Please don’t encourage such illogical movies; they only “inspire” others to churn out more insipid stuff. If this movie ends up becoming a hit, it will only be because Venkatesh fans are getting to see him after so long. Or it will be your fault for going and seeing it despite reading this review J
