Category Archives: Tollywood

Aagadu (2014)

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Aagadu

After the major disappointment of missing 1-Nenokkadine, it felt as if it had been a very long time since I’d been able to indulge in the wonders of Mahesh on the big screen. As an added bonus Aagadu was being shown in my local cinema, the wonderful single-screened art deco Astor, which has the luxury of a dress circle and velveteen-couches for lounging while waiting to get into the auditorium. Plus the bonus of subtitles!

Going to the Astor is always an ‘experience’ and even more so for Mahesh.  There were massive posters with accompanying garlands, samosas for sale in the foyer, and even that rarest of things – allocated seating! Regular visitors to Telugu film nights in Melbourne will understand what revelation this was – no pushing and shoving to get in and try to find a seat that hasn’t been ‘saved’ by the first twenty people through the doors? Not this time! First night, first show and there was an orderly ticket collection queue, a leisurely stroll to your seat (with ushers!) and plenty of time to soak up the atmosphere with the sell-out crowd.

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Aagadu sees Mahesh reunited with Dookudu director Srinu Vaitla, although the partnership doesn’t deliver such an entertaining film this time round.  Along with a number of familiar faces in similar roles, the usual mass themes pop up time and time again, so the plot feels tired even before it gets past the first half hour.  Still, it starts off well enough. Young Shankar is rescued from the streets by Police Inspector Raja Ram (Rajendra Prasad) who adopts him into his household based on Shankar’s non-tolerance approach to crime. Naturally this family relationship doesn’t last long, and Shankar is cast off by Raja Ram in suitably dramatic fashion after taking the blame for something he didn’t do.

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Despite these early troubles Shankar follows in his adopted father’s footsteps and grows up to be ‘Encounter Shankar’; a man so feared that the mere mention of his name is enough to turn big, bad gangsters into quivering cowards.  As expected once he appears on-screen, Mahesh Babu throws villainous thugs around with gay abandon while indulging in snappy dialogues and keeping his uniform creases sharp. Mahesh is in his element here and it shows. He looks even more baby-faced than ever as he single-handedly beats various thugs into submission and revels in his indestructible super-cop persona.  Pretty similar to the way he did in Dookudu really.  The opposing gangsters have learnt nothing and still tend to attack one at a time (they can’t ever watch any movies or they would know better), and there are plenty of barrels, containers, and various other items for them to crash into. The outcome is always a forgone conclusion but it is the getting there that counts, and the action scenes are excellent.

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Encounter Shankar is sent to Bokkapatnam, where crime lord Damodar (Sonu Sood) is terrorising the locals and keeping the police firmly under his own control. Sonu Sood seems a little off his game here and is never quite menacing enough to be the big bad movie villain needed to offset Mahesh’s heroic cop. An early attempt to give him a ‘quirk’ falls flat and apart from one or two moments of sneering he’s a bland and relatively innocuous character.  Srinu Vaitla seems determined to include as much humour as possible, but his inclusion of the gangsters into the comedy motif works against any possible build-up of menace and just isn’t particularly funny.  Even Damodar’s gangster lieutenants are roped in with Raghu Babu, Posani Krishna Murali and Prabhas Seenu dropping their initial villainous personae for dumb comedy routines that do nothing to help the story.

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There is more comedy in the form of M.S. Narayana who is reasonably amusing as a data broker, although the best comedy moments go to Mahesh as he befuddles the villains with reprises of his own movies.  These gangsters really don’t seem to get out to the cinema much!  The usual suspects turn up in the support cast including Nasser who seems wasted in a role as a mildly corrupt cop, while CinemaChaat favourite Ajay fares a little better in a more serious than usual role and Vennela Kishore has a reasonable role as Encounter Shankar’s main assistant.  Brahmi turns up late in the film and it says a lot that he is sorely needed to bring some relief into an otherwise dull and predictable second half.  He plays a broker who ends up as the fall guy for the police operation, but it’s really just the usual slapstick with the addition of a reasonably funny dance mix from recent films, although even that seems a copy of a similar scene from Dookudu.

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Tamanna plays the love interest and starts off as a relatively feisty character that seems to have potential. Unfortunately it doesn’t last, and after she succumbs to Shankar’s trite dialogue she is rewarded by relegation to appearing only in the songs.  There is absolutely zero chemistry between Tamanna and Mahesh but she does get to wear some pretty skirts and twirl around mountains and deserts while Mahesh does some enigmatic walking, so it all works out OK in the end.  I liked the soundtrack and the catchy songs are all well-choreographed and pictured, often with some very enthusiastic backing dancers.  Shruti Haasan makes an appearance in a rather athletic item number which got just as many cheers as Mahesh’s entrance, but Bhel Puri has some of the best costumes.  The backing dancers get to morph from Marvin the Martian to Jack Sparrow while Mahesh sports his classic shirt and jacket combination, although I’m not so sure about his red number with go-faster white stripes.

Overall Aagadu is disappointing, as Srinu Vaitla rehashes ideas from his previous movies and includes too much comedy and an excessive amount of punch dialogue in his formulaic screenplay.  The first half is entertaining enough, but the second half drags until the fast, final showdown which is over almost before it begins.  Mahesh is very watchable and almost manages to carry the entire film with his charismatic screen presence, but even his excellent performance and the best attempts of the rest of the cast aren’t enough to lift Aagadu above average. Best watched in a packed cinema with a large group of Mahesh fans, but in their absence, still worth watching for Mahesh, good action scenes at the start and the songs.

 

Temple says:

Aagadu is similar to other Mahesh films, particularly Dookudu, only longer and much less entertaining.

I found the first half quite dull as the slapstick and comedy uncles piled up and yet the plot never shifted gears.  The ‘comedy’ is broad and overstated – not Mahesh’s finest work. He can be very funny but Aagadu plods along, reusing the same shtick too many times, and Sankar lacks the sarcastic spark Mahesh has brought to other films (like Khaleja or The Businessman). The excessive punch dialogues were meant to be a running gag, but instead seemed a gratuitous reminder of how many other good films I could have been watching instead.  And it’s not an easy film for a new fan as the jokes are very Mahesh-centric, including a nice tribute to his dad, and would largely go over the head of anyone who wasn’t familiar with the oeuvre. The second half is more successful as Sankar FINALLY starts enacting his plans for revenge. Plus I quite enjoyed seeing Brahmi get slapped around. If I had to watch his tedious antics, I was glad to have the vicarious satisfaction of the tight slap.

Despite high production values the CGI work is often poor, both in execution and judgement, and breaks the effect of otherwise excellent action choreography. There is one scene where suddenly Sankar is CGI’d onto a tabletop during a fight and he may as well have been surrounded by a dotted line with a legend saying ‘cut here’. And the subtitles, much as I appreciate the effort, were a bit dodgy. ‘Frightended’ was a highlight, and anarchy had clearly swept through the personal pronoun department. Although I liked the description “Pant. Shirt. Shirt. Shirt.”as I think that is indeed how Mahesh dresses.

Well, at least the Astor has excellent choc-tops. And I hope that nice man The Mahesh Fan and I were talking to after the movie found his way to Doncaster.

 

Hyderabad Blues (1998)

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Hyderabad Blues opens with a montage of Hyderabad landmarks and the usual sights of men pissing and spitting, cows wandering the streets – the stuff any first time visitor to India would notice. Varun narrates, his American accented English sounding slightly Zoolander-ish; ‘As scared as anyone would be in a foreign land – but wait a minute, this is my home’. He has to be coached on meeting relatives, what to say to a servant, who everyone is, and he feels caught betwixt and between.

Varun (Nagesh Kukunoor) is health conscious and snooty – his mum is determined to feed him up but he can’t stand the high fat high carb meals. He droops around the house looking disgruntled and superior. His mates rib him about his bad attitude and encourage him to remember how things are in India. Harish (Anoop Ratnaker Rao) is married and Sanjeev (Vikram Inamdar) will be soon. Most of his time with friends consists of happy reminiscing over the past but when they talk of current times the differences are apparent and there is lots of “Fuck you man!” Kukunoor produced, wrote, and directed the film on a shoestring, and cast himself in the lead. He sounds like he is just reading the script with little modulation in his voice. His performance is among the weakest and the character is self-centred and often obnoxious, so the sympathy I had for Varun evaporated quite quickly. (I thought that about his appearance in Dor as well.)

Sanjeev says arranged marriage makes him the king as he can chose whoever he wants and since Varun views his marriage as solely his choice I don’t think they are really so different. Varun fancies a friend of Sanjeev’s selected bride Seema (the ebullient Elahe Hiptoola), and asks for an introduction.

Ashwini (Rajshri Nair) is a doctor. Despite his progressive foreign ideas Varun is both surprised at a woman being a doctor and dismissive of her ability since she got in on a seat reserved for women. They celebrate Holi with friends and Ashwini takes bhang to be rebellious. While she is off her nut, Varun takes advantage to ask the most important question in his life – why doesn’t she like him as much as she should? She calls him out on his contempt for Indians and his put on foreign airs and stupid accent, calling him a pseud. She believes he expects all dates to end in sex, and she is not interested in being a notch on his belt. But they make a date to see Hum Apke Hain Kaun (13 songs! He must fancy her!). Rajshri Nair is generally quite good and her girl next door look suits Ashwini. There are abrupt shifts in tone required by the dialogue and she is shrill and over the top in some of the more explosive moments. She is much more effective in the scenes when Ashwini is joking around with her friend Seema or in the conversational interludes between arguments with Varun.

I liked the setting for the story. People are ordinary middle class, and live normal relatable lives. They play out the large and small rituals of life; weddings, funerals, cleaning, preparing food, and conversations that sound like duets of well rehearsed lines. I liked the mix of languages as people would start a conversation in Telugu, wander into Hindi and end with English. It’s a familiar sound to me and also helped define the characters as on more serious topics people reverted to their preferred language and cadence. Some of the one-liners are quite witty and the family rivalries and bragging about whose son was better added some levity. There are nice touches as Varun starts to soften or reconnect with his culture, like when he deigns to offer money at a shrine and then dashes back to make sure he left an odd amount just like his mother told him. I liked seeing the little bit of playfulness as Seema and Sanjeev completed their wedding formalities and the way these details added depth to the characters and relationships. The clash of generations and of different cultural influences is interesting and I know so many of my friends have gone through similar experiences so I expected to love the film. But between some dodgy plot development, Varun’s endless whining, and Kukunoor’s suboptimal acting, too many things tried my patience.

I really liked that the relationship is not plain sailing and Varun has to work to win Ashwini over. His parents object as Ashwini is a different caste and they had several someone elses in mind. Ashwini and Varun meet daily at the hospital and she says they will be the subject of gossip and that she does worry to an extent as she needs to live her life once he has returned to the US. She also tells him he is probably just another NRI coming to find a maid/slave/wife. He says he is different but he is confused about what he wants and where they would make their home. Ashwini scolds him for assuming she would want to marry him (and that he hasn’t asked) and for also assuming she would just leave everything she has in India and follow him. It’s fair enough that he doesn’t want to throw away 12 years of hard work, but he doesn’t extend the same courtesy to her.

But while Ashwini opens up about her fears and hopes and how she thinks the cultural gap is just too big to bridge, Varun strikes a more adolescent note. He and Sanjeev have a lame running gag about wanking and they constantly leer at Shashi Aunty and her precariously draped pallu. Varun has a track record that inspires scorn and envy from his mates. But then Varun likens Sanjeev’s wedding night to a drunken one nighter as he has only just met his partner, and Sanju is (understandably) pissed off. Harish and Sanju don’t seem to think sex outside of marriage is an option and caution Varun about treating Ashwini lightly. When she pushes Varun away mid-kiss he cracks it as that must be a sign of backwards values, not her preference or a reflection on his kissing. It was interesting that Varun could be disparaging of custom and society, but when Ashwini’s criticism of culture was directed at her father, Varun came to his defence saying you couldn’t ignore 5000 years of tradition and that her dad did his best. Hmmm. Sounds like a typical manchild to me!

The resolution to the on again off again romance is totally filmi and not really in a good way. I was disappointed after the relatively realistic build up that too many people acted in a way that was inconsistent with their previous behaviour. I appreciate the challenge of making an indie film, especially in an industry that is geared towards formulaic blockbusters, so Nagesh Kukunoor deserves credit for getting his film out there (even if I don’t think he deserves any for his acting). But for me there are some substantial negatives in the acting and the story that are detrimental to the overall quality. The movie is on YouTube with subs. 3 stars.

Anji

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Anji is an unashamed tilt at a commercial blockbuster with an obviously huge budget and everything including the kitchen sink by way of recommended masala ingredients. Kodi Ramakrishna directed Devi, Ammoru, and the more recent Arundhati, all of which had big special effects and equally big performances. I think those films are more effective than Anji overall as the stories were less obviously ‘inspired’ by Hollywood. Also I suspect that casting such a big name hero skewed the story towards him, leaving mostly comic relief and buffoonery for the other performers. But the visuals are pretty good and Chiranjeevi brings his own style and verve to the adventure.

Back in 1932 a nasty man with blue contacts and huge teeth (Bhupinder Singh) tried to steal a sacred relic, the Aatmalingam. The Aatmalingam catches the waters of the Akasa Ganga every 72 years, and drinking that water grants immortality. Luckily for us and not so luckily for him, he triggers the defences around the Aatmalingam. Bhatia barely escapes, losing an arm to a sentient flying sword.

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I must just question the wisdom of sending a man with those fingernails to do a delicate job of thievery.

In 2004, when the heavenly miracle is due to occur again, Bhatia (now overacted by Tinnu Anand with odd prosthetic earlobes) once again has a crack at gaining supreme power. A diary containing the pertinent lore was sent to Swapna (Namrata Shirodkar), a student in the USA, to keep it safe. She returns to India and thanks to fate and public transport, meets Anji (Chiranjeevi) and is pursued by idiots (MS Narayana and gang). After hiring Anji to escort her to her destination, the two realise they have to protect the Aatmalingam (and all the people) and defeat the bad guy. They join forces in an adventure with epic overtones and rush towards the final confrontation.

There are numerous scenes lifted directly from other films – the Crocodile Dundee knife scene, references to the Indiana Jones series and Romancing The Stone among others – but with a Telugu mass and Megastar spin.

Big special effects are one thing but the actors still have to deliver. Anji rights wrongs, protects the defenceless and keep an eye on the guru (Nagendra Babu in some terrible wrinkle makeup). One thing I consistently enjoy about Chiru’s films is that even in the most familiar material he doesn’t seem to be phoning it in. I liked that Anji was a little bit whiny and ‘why me?’ in some scenes but his morals were sound. Chiru had good rapport with his brother Nagendra Babu and with the other filmi family members. The action scenes (by Peter Hein) are fast and often played for laughs as well as adrenalin, and Chiru highkicks and leaps like there is no tomorrow. Anji is ambushed in the jungle, beaten and pushed over a cliff but Heroes bounce when they hit rock bottom (literally and figuratively it seems). The dances are energetic and lots of fun. Anji is often the object of female fantasy in the songs so I quite enjoyed pondering why someone would imagine that particular outfit or that dance move when their thoughts turned to love (or lust). Chik Buk Pori is beautifully shot and features Chiru and his backing dudes, Ramya Krishnan as a flirty con artist, singing orphans and a random white chick. Who could ask for more?

Namrata Shirodkar is perhaps best known as the woman who persuaded Mahesh Babu he could wear t-shirts, AND wear them one at a time. Oh, and she is a former Miss India. Swapna seems like a smart modern girl while in the US – she flies a plane, drives a fast fancy car – all of which is promising in an adventure. So I was confused when she came to India and walking and talking simultaneously seemed to be rather challenging. Her acting mostly ranges from jiggle and giggle to SCREAM and grimace. And the Telugu dubbing gives her a breathy little girl voice which is just annoying. She doesn’t have great chemistry with Chiru, but romance is a fair way down the ranks of subplots which was refreshing. I was expecting more substance in this role based on Ammoru and Devi which had fierce female leads. Namrata’s performance holds up reasonably well as she wasn’t challenged to deliver much more than be a foil for The Hero. Although Swapna did remember some of her foreign skills and I was pleased to see her steal and hotwire a bus to save the obligatory orphans.

The songs are well integrated into the action so they don’t halt the momentum. I wouldn’t care anyway because Chiru! Dancing! Lawrence is credited as a choreographer and he works so well with Chiranjeevi. Swapna throws some bark on the fire and ends up stoned. He knows what it is but he inhales anyway (eventually, after helpfully explaining what was happening). All of which leads Abbo Nee Amma. Om Shanti Om is stylistically a little weird but Namrata’s outfits add some entertainment value even if her dancing doesn’t. Reema Sen makes an appearance in Mirapakaya Bajji that has excellent use of Chiru.

There are some cool effects but there are also polyester stick on beards and an unconvincing roasted lizard on a stick. And a baby crocodile that squeaks like a rubber mouse. But I was pleased to see that when Anji’s dog attacked to save a family member it was clearly a stuffed toy and not a real dog being shaken around. And the horse stunts were not too scary. Where the adventure intersects more with history and religion, the quality and scale of the effects improves although the gore levels were consistent throughout. The religious elements are woven into the action very well and give the story more substance. In one scene Anji accidentally does the right things in the right order and is protected from the giant snake and flying sword. Because I understood what he should do I found the sequence gripping, where sometimes I wonder ‘who made this nonsensical ritual up?’. Some of the magical effects when the Aatmalingam is discovered are very pretty, and there are some excellent locations and sets. Maybe Kodi Ramakrishna is a thrifty director and spends his budget where it will have the most impact. The final confrontation takes place in the Himalayas and Heaven, under the eye of Shiva. It’s all quite grand and otherworldly.

Anji is entertaining from start to finish. My DVD ends quite abruptly following the showdown between Bhatia and Anji but I am quite happy as Swapna was doing something useful for a change, and I suspect if there is a missing scene it probably has singing orphans. Chiru owns his role and his energy is evident in every scene. If you like fantasy or supernatural adventures or have a soft spot for Indiana Jones and Chiranjeevi then I highly recommend Anji. 4 stars!