Category Archives: Tollywood

Marana Mrudangam

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Marana Mrudangam is Chiranjeevi in his mass hero avatar – meting out justice, charming the ladies, fighting evil-doers and dancing up a storm. I never cease to be amazed by A Kodandarami Reddy’s imagination and Marana Mrudangam is full of crazy details, wild schemes, stunts and an array of dodgy looking props. Plus – Ranjeet!

Johny (Chiru) and Billu (Nagendra Babu, Chiranjeevi’s brother) run a small restaurant/bar.

One day Johny stops to help Utpala (Suhasini) and Anusha (Radha) when their car has broken down. Utpala is a nurse, and Radha is a high powered manager of a hotel that also seems to trade in import export.

Two girls, two guys – it’s a love triangle waiting to happen. Utpala falls for Johny who has fallen for Anusha while Billu seems to fancy Utpala a little.

I don’t mind rom-coms when Chiru is doing both rom and com, but I was hoping for a bit more masala inspired action. Imagine my delight when Billu cracked an egg to make an omelette and found it was full of COCAINE!

No I don’t know how Johny knew how to identify cocaine. But he also knew how to track the drug back to its origin and so the thrills and spills began!

Salim (Ranjeet) is a very bad man, and not just because he wears an excessive amount of very tight denim. He is a cold eyed killer and rapist and the enforcer in Vasantdada’s (Suresh Oberoi) gang.

He has no impulse control and his character could be summed up as ‘Rapey’. Ranjeet also has a thing for staking people out to die. It’s neither fast nor efficient but he does persist.

Salim impersonates a policeman and lures Anusha out of her home, intending to assault her, but Johny intervenes. Utpala needs help too. Her brother fell into the clutches of Vasantdada and before dying managed to write a letter that will bring the gang down. Johny and Billu rise to the occasion and decide to eliminate the gang and get revenge for Vasantdada’s past crimes. Vasantdada’s henchmen all wear matching outfits in different styles and colours each time they appear which was a nice detail (and helped me remember which fight was which).

Suhasini is one of my favourite actresses and while this is a fairly small role she made an impression as the good natured and straight forward Utpala. She suffers terrible loss but is determined to do the right thing. Utpala isn’t confident to act on her own and relies on Johny and Billu for advice and to do what is needed. She has a comedy scene or two, and Suhasini is not a woman I expect to see rolling drunk on screen.  But she still looked lovely.

Anusha is a haughty heroine who doesn’t lack self-confidence at all. She is independent and determined but still needs Johny to save her on numerous occasions when having a sharp tongue isn’t enough.

And I haven’t mentioned the costumes. I think in this song the wardrobe guys were so horrified by this outfit

that they gave up on clothes for a while:

Chiru tends towards the high pants with the low belt, often doubling up on the fabric for both shirt and pants, and nicely accessorised with an eye catching array of gloves.

He opts for pleather for the big occasions, but as demonstrated in that song, costumes are not necessary for Johny to make a splash.

Chiru has better chemistry with Suhasini than with Radha, though perhaps that’s just my bias. It’s clear that the saucy Anusha is Johny’s type.

But really the focus of his performance is the heroics and that he does with his customary verve.

Nagendra Babu is sweet as Billu. Compared to Johny he is quiet and shy but he is handy in a fight. He favoured denim overalls and flowery shirts which added to the slightly comedic nice guy image. He is quite tall so the effect when he was flinging little bad guys around with abandon was very funny. It’s not surprising that he and Chiru have great rapport on screen and I liked seeing them bounce dialogue off each other in their scenes.

The story is based on a popular novel. The author Yandamoori Veerendranath adapted the screenplay himself and the pace and plotting is a strength of the film. There are obviously some scenes designed purely for maximum Mega presence, but Chiranjeevi manages to incorporate them all into the character of Johny so it flowed quite well.

The climax of the film is fantastic but I did have a horribly sick feeling in a couple of minutes of footage involving horse stunts. I am certain not all of the horses were unharmed and suspect a couple didn’t survive. If this worries you please don’t watch from around 2hrs 5 min to 2 hrs 8 min. Before that I was delighted by one of the most ridiculous fake aircraft I think I have ever seen and there were some nifty come-uppances for the baddies.

The Illaiyaraja soundtrack is nice enough but I struggle to recall the songs without the visuals. Chiranjeevi and Radha don’t have the greatest choreography to work with but give it all loads of energy and flair. Visually the film is very striking with lots of crazy camera angles, stylised compositions and reminds me a little of some vintage 60s spy shows, albeit with acid wash denim.

Marana Mrudangam is a pacey masala entertainment, and if you are prepared to perhaps skip the horse scene, this is very good fun. And really, it was worth seeing just for the surprise of the naked Chiru chicken dance. 4 stars!

Saroja

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Saroja is a fairly standard thriller with a decent dose of dramatic tension thanks to some very good performances and loads of visual flair. I ordered the Tamil DVD but was sent the Telugu dub, which apart from the obvious difference also cast Srihari instead of Jayaram in a pivotal role. I quite like Srihari as an actor, and as I speak neither language subtitles are subtitles, so I was happy enough. I’ll be referring to characters by their names in the Telugu version.

Prakash Raj is Viswanatham, a successful Hyderabadi businessman. He is a self centred man, in an uneasy marriage and not giving his teenage daughter Saroja as much attention as he gives his breakfast.

That is until Saroja (Vega), is kidnapped. It’s one of my favourite Prakash Raj performances as he conveys fear, despair and regrets with only a scant amount of dialogue. His reactions and expressions are just perfect. There is a scene where he and his wife are watching home movies of Saroja. They can’t look at each other as they have an intimate conversation that is realistically awkward and painful.

The depth of characterisation established so simply helped me care about what happened to Saroja since it meant so much to her father.

Saroja gets an intro song about girl power and the evils of alcohol, which she delivers after sneaking out of her window to get to the gig. She is largely absent until late in the film as the drama is centred on the police operation to find her, but her character is established as resourceful and independent.

Srihari is Viswa’s friend Ravi, a charismatic policeman who takes on this very personal case. Srihari running isn’t exactly a greyhound so the chase scenes had me worried, but he is an authority figure and pillar of strength. Ravi orchestrates the police activity to recover Saroja and is on hand to witness the devastating effect the kidnapping has on his friend. There is a bit more complexity to his role than just a standard crusading cop though and Srihari and Prakash Raj share some excellent eye to eye moments. I don’t really buy his excuse for something he does, but it wasn’t a big deal overall.

There is a second storyline that will collide with the straightforward police procedural. It centres on a group of friends, totally unrelated to Viswanatham and his concerns.

Vaibhav is Rama Swamy.  The girl he loves (Kajal Aggarwal in a brief appearance) gets engaged to his friend Ajay. He is trying to make the best of his lot and comes across as a moody but not unpleasant guy. Ajay (Shiva) is a soap actor who thinks he is a little more special than he is, and tries to get by on what he considers to be charm. He gets some of the better intentionally funny lines as he cites his TV serial commitments as a reason for avoiding anything he doesn’t want to do. Rama’s older brother Renga Swamy (SP Charan) is the average guy – happy, married with a daughter, middle class, comfortably podgy. Premji Amaren (brother of the director) is the comic relief, Ganesh, and almost every time he opened his mouth I wanted to kill him. To be fair, his straight dramatic scenes were good and a few of the jokes were funny.  Every time he saw a pretty girl, badly dressed angels would cavort around her, and the angels got grumpier as they had to keep reappearing for different girls.

But the comedy track mostly involved Ganesh acting stupid and grimacing wildly. If you find a man screaming his lungs out at the sight of a rat, or telling everyone loudly why he has to be quiet, funny maybe you’ll like him more than I do.

The boys set out on a roadtrip from Chennai to Hyderabad to go to a one day match. After driving for a few hours, including about 257 snack and pee breaks as well as a run in with Brahmi, they are delayed by a major road accident and decide to take an alternate route.

The storylines intersect when the guys take a wrong turn in the dark and end up in a spooky factory complex occupied by the imposing Sampath (Sampath Raj) and his gang, who have Saroja captive. The adrenalin rises from this point until the film’s conclusion as the boys try and extricate themselves from their perilous situation and accidentally seem to be rescuing the girl. There is always time for a dance break though! Kalyani (Nikitha) and Sampath entertain the troops and I have to say seeing all the bad guys in a dance number was a lot of fun.

The ‘heroes’ and the baddies are ordinary guys and the fights and chases are consistent with that. There are no amazing flying leaps and stunts, but there is a strong feeling of the fear and effort in those scenes which is amplified by the lighting and composition of the shots and Saravanan’s cinematography is impressive. Even when things got less believable, the characters remained true to themselves and didn’t develop superpowers. There is some question in my mind as to how well these guys could navigate an unfamiliar place in the dead of night, but whatever. I thought Vega was convincing and in most scenes looked like a school girl. There were signs of a romantic attraction between her and Ram that I thought was a bit not right in view of their character ages. It’s just a fleeting thing but was it necessary for it to be there at all?

The Yuvan Shankar Raja (Venkat Prabhu’s cousin – what a family) soundtrack is good and the range of musical styles supports the full span of the drama. While the songs are well placed in the story, I’m not sure all the picturisations were necessary. The montages sometimes caused a break from the overall mood as they were even more stylised than the rest of the film. The direction relies on gimmicks but that visual interest and excitement helped to give a standard plot a bit of freshness. The story doesn’t completely rely on the visuals so I didn’t feel it was too glossy for its own good. The performances, especially Prakash Raj’s, are compelling on their own.

It’s a film where the outcomes probably won’t surprise anyone, but the way those things happen might. If you want a modern looking comedy/drama/thriller that’s not too heavy on gore and showcases some good character actors, give this a go.  4 stars!

Heather says: Saroja has all the right ingredients to make a good film with an interesting story, excellent cast lineup and snappy dialogue. But it suffers a little from a very long set up with perhaps too much detail in some scenes and not enough in others. There are also a few scenes where the action takes place in poorly lit sets and I found it very hard to tell what was going on. However, once past the slow beginning, it’s a very enjoyable watch as it blends comedy with action and drama in a way that is rare in Tamil cinema. I do like the way the action is preceded with a date and time stamp in the opening sequences as it gives the feel of an American cop show and plants the idea that time is important. Although perhaps this isn’t followed up quite as well in later scenes. The introductions to the various characters are generally good, but I would have preferred director Venkat Prabhu to spend a little more time with Saroja’s family. It is clear that Viswanathan is caught up in his work and doesn’t have time for his daughter, but I think a little more information about the family dynamic would have made their characters more sympathetic. It took more time to get a feel for Saroja and her father as a result, although this may very well have been intentional, as we learn about the family as the film goes on, just as the four friends do.

The interaction between the friends is well done, and feels very realistic. Perhaps it’s not quite as realistic though that they remain undiscovered sneaking around the bad guys’ lair with all of their arguing and long conversations. But the comedy in these was good and the story was well played out in these scenes. The action sequences, at least those that are visible, are also well choreographed and there are some really good ideas in the execution of the various fight sequences.

I liked the twist at the end which I did not see coming at all, although I thought the justification by the villain was rather weak. In it for the money alone might have worked better, but it was still a good ending. I also enjoyed the comedy with Ganesh seeing angels appearing around pretty girls. All of the four characters worked well for me as they each had some endearing character traits and some really off-putting ones – just like in real life. They seemed like much more normal guys than typical filmi heroes which makes the film more interesting to watch.

This is the first of Venkat Prabhu’s films I’ve seen and it’s inspired me to find his others. I’d say skip over a lot of the set-up and then sit back to enjoy a really good action comedy. 3 ½  stars.

Attaku Yamudu Ammayiki Mogudu

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This was the first Chiranjeevi film I watched and I still totally love it. It was a hit when it was released in 1989 and was subsequently remade as Mapillai in Tamil and Jamai Raja in Hindi, but I think the original is the best. It’s a fantastic introduction to Chiru as it has some great action scenes, good comedy and of course totally awesome dancing. The only downside is the rather poor quality of the DVD which means that the screencaps below are rather blurry – sorry!

Chiranjeevi plays Kalyan, a graduate who has come to the city to find a job. He ends up crossing paths with medical student Rekha when she points him out to the police as the man who has stolen a bride at a wedding. This opening sequence has some great action shots as Chiru fights on, around and over a motorbike. There is also some good comedy when a drunken Kalyan goes to Rekha’s hostel room to complain about her method of identifying him to the police, especially since he knows he is the good guy. The scene is so simple but Chiru is very funny and gets plenty of humour from just one  line – just brilliant!

As  Rekha’s eyes have been opened to  Kalyan’s good qualities, in true filmi style she instantly falls in love. And once again following filmi tradition she decides that the way to win his love is to stalk him until he realises that of course he loves her too. To this end she stakes out the apartment Kalyan shares with his friend Brahmam (an almost unrecognisable youthful Brahmi with a full head of hair) and finally achieves her aim of getting Kalyan to fall in love with her too despite her rather unfortunate preference for the colour pink. At which point we get this rather fabulous song which features some  excellent hat choreography too .

With his love life sorted, Kalyan then discovers that his sister Lakshmi has been brutally rejected as a wife for her son by the rich and arrogant Mrs Chamundeshwari. To give you an idea of just how rich she is, and exactly what her priorities are, this is how she is introduced. (The blurring in this case is intentional)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kalyan is furious at Mrs Chamundeshwari’s attitude and initially refuses to let his sister marry Prasad, but changes his mind when he learns that his sister is pregnant. Prasad confesses to fear of his mother but decides that with Kalyan’s support he will dare to defy her, just as long as it’s all kept very secret!

Kalyan also learns that his love Rekha is Mrs Chamundeshwari’s daughter, which gives him a way to exact the perfect revenge. He marries Rekha and battle lines are drawn as Kalyan and Mrs Chamundeshwari fight for control of Rekha loyalties and ultimately the fate of the rest of the family. At the same time Mrs Chamundeshwari’s crooked brother Vinayaka Rao and his sidekick Kanala have turned up to try and con whatever they can from her. Recognising a rival in Kalyan they too attempt to discredit him in Rekha’s eyes with a number of crooked schemes that ultimately all fail. Kalyan enlists his friend Brahmam’s help and along the way finds another supporter in the form of Mrs Chamundeshwari’s estranged husband.

The reason I like this film so much is the excellent interaction between Kalyan and Mrs Chamundeshwari. Vanisree is fantastic as the haughty and overbearing factory owner who believes that her wealth gives her the right to make everyone do exactly as she wants. ApparentlyVanisree was a previously retired heroine who used this role as her comeback, and it certainly was a good choice. She has a lot more to do than the usual filmi mother and she exudes arrogance and distain at every step. Chiranjeevi is charismatic and charming in his role as Kalyan and gives his character plenty of compassion to contrast with the lack of feeling from Mrs Chamundeshwari. The clashes between the two are immensely enjoyable and there is a twinkle in Chiru’s eye which makes it seem as if he really enjoyed defying his mother in law at every opportunity. Of course, it could also be because he knows that he’s about to get into this outfit.

The high mortal stance from Kaylan ensures that he is the good guy throughout and director A. Kodandarami Reddy is at pains to ensure that we know he fell in love with Rekha before he met her mother. It’s not just a marriage of revenge, but a true love match. The scene depicting the first night between Kalyan and Rekha is very sweet and the story manages to mix both the conflict between Kalyan and his mother in law and the romance between Kalyan and Rekha very well. The screenplay is well written with some excellent dialogue to keep the film interesting throughout.  And there is of course a twist at the end which includes some more great action sequences. Although Vijayshanti as Rekha doesn’t have a large part to play in the film after she finally wins Kaylan’s love, her early scenes are fun. She is the dutiful sari-wearing daughter at home, but a typical young student when she goes back to the city. She changes into Western style clothes, starts smoking, and of course goes out to stalk Kalyan – all activities her mother would certainly not approve.

The set design is also fab. I have no idea what this is supposed to be, but it looks as if there is a large animal with claws as an ornament above this curtain. Sadly this is as much of it as we ever get to see since I think it looks awesome. At first I thought it was a light but on repeated viewings I’m quite sure it has claws, paws and a tail! I also love this light sculpture and there is an abundance of wonderful furniture throughout the house. Just look at the animal print stand in the bedroom for example.

While the songs by K. Chakravarthy aren’t particularly memorable, the costumes and dancing are and  Chiru and Vijayshanti look great together.I like this song as it focuses solely on Chiru with his backing dancers, although I do question the decision to make them wear these pants – they almost manage to distract me from Chiru. But only almost.

It’s a great film with a good story and well worth watching for a masala mix of romance, action, drama and comedy. The cast is excellent, the dancing fantastic and the house decor is a standout. A trip back into the eighties and worth every minute. 4 ½ stars.