I had high hopes for Srikanth Odela & Nani’s combination, especially since I’m a huge fan of Dasara… a simple story of Lust, Love & Friendship, blended perfectly with a raw, rural Telangana backdrop and emotions….
But here, it felt like they wanted to encash the craze by mixing templates that had worked in other movies. Srikanth wanted to make a violent movie with Nani, hired Anirudh for the BGM and only then tried to STITCH together a story and the other elements… the result is a Khichadi version of Peddi, Kingdom, Andhrawala, KGF and many other such movies about oppression!!!
Then Srikanth watched Game of Thrones and designed Nani’s look to match Khal Drogo’s… then he watched Dhurandhar and thought chapter names were a good idea, so he used the same font to add names that aren’t needed and don’t make any impact!!!!
Of all these inspirations, using politicians’ real-life looks for fictional characters was the only one that worked for me… again, inspired by Dhurandhar!!!
I couldn’t connect with the first half at all… I kept getting that déjà vu feeling of having watched a similar story somewhere or the other!!! However, I did feel Srikanth handled the interval and the blocks immediately after it slightly better than the rest of the movie.
But the attempt to take the story in a completely different direction post interval felt superficial. It felt like Srikanth himself had realised he wasn’t showing anything new and tried to change course… only to end up being more concerned with respecting Mohan Babu’s stature than treating his character as part of the story!!!
This is where I felt casting Mohan Babu backfired. On one hand, Nani is shown as someone so powerful that no one can touch him, and he can easily kill everyone ruthlessly… yet he can’t fight Mohan Babu’s character!!!
It felt like the story was dragged just to keep the hero and the main villain from coming face to face after the post-interval blocks… all to avoid a situation where the hero kicks the nuts out of the villain!!! A big-budget commercial movie where the hero and villain never have a FINAL SHOWDOWN… that’s the stupidest part for me :(
The movie boasts so many big names, yet everyone is wasted and just used to fill the screen!!! Coming to Nani’s performance, for the first time, I felt he overacted… and that’s very rare for an actor called the Natural Star!!!
Ultimately, I felt they were betting big on the audience connecting with the struggles of the people of Paradise and drawing parallels between their agitation and the Telangana agitation!!! If anyone connects with it that way, they may like this film. Otherwise, there is nothing in it!!!!
For me, Anirudh’s BGM & songs are the only saving grace for this movie….
