Tag Archives: Shashank

Mungaru Male 2

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Yogaraj Bhat’s 2006 Mungaru Male was a big hit so it’s not too surprising that the story has been revisited in this 2016 reboot written and directed by Shashank. However, although there is a Preetham and a Nandini, a pre-arranged marriage to disrupt and plenty of rain, Shashank doesn’t quite manage to recapture the magic of the first film. It’s a reasonable enough romance but nowhere near as engaging as the original, and with an unlikeable hero in the first half and a ridiculously over-dramatic and improbable climax it’s newcomer Neha Shetty and the beauty of Rajasthan and Karnataka that make the biggest impressions.

Preetham (Ganesh) is the immature and brattish son of multi-millionaire businessman V. Ravichandran, whose major problem in life is that he is easily bored. The film starts with some dodgy CGI of a helicopter as Preetham pulls out all the stops to impress Shreya (Aindrita Ray), the current object of his desire. However before long Preetham has had enough of his new relationship and unceremoniously dumps Shreya using incredibly juvenile dialogue, while Shreya reacts unrealistically well to being told she is too dull for the spoilt rich kid. Preetham’s childish behaviour continues (although I suspect he’s supposed to look spontaneous and hip), as he runs off on a train trip to Rajasthan. On the train he meets Nandini (Neha Shetty) and the two abandon the tour to experience the colour and vibrancy of Rajasthan by themselves as temporary girlfriend and boyfriend.

This part of the film works as a standard romance, apart from the frequently childish behaviour from Preetham. Nandini also has a tendency to be obnoxious at times, although to a lesser extent, and at least she is never as deliberately cruel as Preetham. Perhaps unthinkingly selfish is the best description as it’s Nandini who decides where to go and what to do. Thankfully Shekar Chandra makes the most of the stunning landscapes and colourful locals, so at least the film looks amazing in these scenes.

Post interval the action moves to rain-drenched Karnataka as Preetham discovers that he has fallen in love with Nandini and finally decides to try and find her. This he does, just in time to learn that she is engaged to a US based doctor who is planning to move back to India and open a charity hospital built by Nandini’s father P. Ravi Shankar. How’s that for perfect matchmaking! To add more drama, there is a family connection behind the marriage which supposedly makes it even more imperative that the marriage goes ahead, but which seemed to me to be more of a good reason why the whole thing should be called off.  Sadhu Kokila adds some humour to the proceedings while V. Ravichandran is good as Preetham’s concerned father.

Shankar tries to add a new twist to the Mungaru Male storyline here and to be fair it works reasonably well up to a point. Ganesh’s Preetham becomes more likeable once he falls in love with Nandini and the two have some better chemistry together in the second half. The songs are also more appropriately placed and generally well visualised while the stunning waterfalls and beautiful scenery in Karnataka add to the romantic atmosphere.  In fact it doesn’t go too pear-shaped until the last 20 minutes when the slow but sweet romance suddenly switches to a crazy action sequence and completely ridiculous ending. There are even matching head bandages and bloodstains for the lead pair as they career around a hospital trying to find each other. It’s so silly that it becomes hilarious, although I suspect that it’s meant to be dramatic and tense instead.

There are a few franchises where sequels have worked well, but more usually they fail to live up to the original, and such is the case here. The best parts of the film are undoubtedly the songs by Arjun Janya and the beautiful cinematography from Shekar Chandra, but that’s not enough to save the film. Ganesh tries hard, but his character is too spoilt and brattish in the first half to allow any empathy for Preetham later on. Neha Shetty is good and does well with this more modern and independent Nandini, although she loses much of her spark once she admits her love for Preetham. Just for once I’d like to see the heroine not become a wet blanket once she falls in love! Sadly Mungaru Male 2 just doesn’t live up to expectations and is probably one for the fans. Or wait to watch on DVD when you can skip forward past Preetham’s bratty behaviour and enjoy the travels through Rajasthan and Karnataka instead.

Yevadu (2014)

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Yevadu

It’s unfortunate that Yevadu didn’t get a cinema release in Melbourne earlier this year, as I think it would be a better watch on the big screen with a fan audience. Vamsi Paidipally’s film takes the central concept from John Woo’s Face Off as a basis for his story, but other than that it’s a fairly standard mass revenge saga with plenty of associated mayhem. Charan plays the wronged Sathya, initially out for his own revenge, but then drawn into a different battle. The ideas are good, but the execution is flawed and Yevadu is no place for any rational thought. However if mindless entertainment with plenty of fights and some great dancing is what you are after, then it could definitely fit the bill.

Yevadu starts off well with Allu Arjun in the role of Sathya and Kajal Aggarwal as his fiancée Deepthi, although it’s rather a long set-up for the main story. Deepthi has been chosen by local Vizag Don Veeru Bhai (Rahul Dev) as the latest object of his desire, and saying no is apparently not a viable option. Veeru relies on intimidation and kidnapping his victims rather than natural charm, and while Sathya is happy to take on Veeru Bhai and his gang, Deepthi is rather more sensible and persuades her fiancé that it would be safer to leave Vizag. However Veeru Bhai’s brother (an enthusiastically vicious Ajay) and his merry band of gangsters catch up with the couple and Satya is left to die on the burning bus after Deepthi is murdered in front of his eyes. It’s a fairly brutal beginning but it neatly establishes the character of Satya as an angry and potentially violent man, but also one who is passionate and prepared to do anything for Deepthi.

Miraculously, Satya manages to survive, but is so badly burned that the only hope for his survival is some rather drastic surgery. Fast forward a few months and Sathya is heavily bandaged but recovering in a hospital. The big reveal is that he has been given a new face – amazingly without any scars, and has also managed to acquire a new body and a different voice to go with his altered look. Sathya (now Ram Charan) hasn’t become any more rational or any less angry however, and he runs away from miracle worker/ surgeon Dr Sharada to find Veeru Bhai and make him pay for Deepthi’s murder.

This part of the film almost makes sense, if you ignore the dodgy medicine and coloured contact lenses.  Charan portrays the part of a driven killer with plenty of maniacal determination that naturally follows on from the perpetually angry Sathya of the opening scenes. Sathya has lost everything he ever cared about and the only thing that matters is killing the men who murdered Deepthi, so a certain amount of focused aggression works well. However no amount of cleverly constructed vengeful violence can disguise the massive plot holes or complete lack of plausibility in much of the story.  Sathya somehow finds a change of clothes after leaving the hospital, as well as his motorbike and a camera, long before he goes back to his old flat where he might conceivably have picked such things up. That is, if they were still there after his months of recovery in hospital –  rather a stretch since everyone thought Sathya was dead. Thankfully there is plenty of great dancing to distract from the flimsy story.

Sathya does what any self-respecting Telugu hero would do and goes about taking his systematic revenge. Along the way there is some comedy with Brahmi and a very out of place looking Amy Jackson, but neither of these makes much impression and both serve mainly as a distraction for Veeru Bhai and his gang. Rahul Dev does plenty of sneering and lusting after various women, but after his initial introduction he’s not particularly impressive as a gangster. His gang aren’t ever shown indulging in any typical gang-like activities either, and there is no particular menace associated with any of the heavies. Ajay even sheds his violent persona and becomes part of the comedy, which suits him just as well but also dilutes any sense of threat from the villains.

Everything follows a straightforward and suitably vengeful path until the interval, when Vamsi Paidipally attempts to justify the face transplant idea and Sathya suddenly comes under attack from a different gang of thugs. It’s a change in direction, but that’s all as the film doesn’t become any more plausible or less over-dramatic, and there are just as many plot holes and inconsistencies.

While the disjointedness of the film is  odd, the problem I have with Yevadu lies more in the characterisation of Sathya. The story would be more convincing if there was a greater difference between the personalities of Charan (the original owner of the face) and Sathya, and additionally if each stayed true to those personalities throughout.  Sathya’s cold, controlled fury and drive to eliminate Deepthi killers to the exclusion of all else  suits the initial story, but much of that drive and anger vanish in the second half. While a certain loss of focus can be explained by the lack of a personal connection, Sathya becomes softer and too much like the character portrayed by Charan in flashback. Equally, although the character of Charan starts off as possibly a more intellectual character, as the story unfolds and he gets involved in fighting against the takeover of an area by a gang of thugs, Charan becomes just as cold and angry as Sathya. Keeping the two personalities more separate could have enhanced the idea of a changed face while the personality was still the same, but as it is Charan and Sathya are so similar that the change in face is almost irrelevant.

The second storyline is even more predictable and clichéd than the revenge story of the first half, although Vamsi Paidipally tries to compensate by increasing the volume of the background music and by repeating every significant shot at least three times. Subbaraju, Shashank and Kota Srinivasa Rao bring their usual competence to the roles of the villains but there isn’t anything novel about either their plans to bring a community to its knees or Charan/Satha’s attempts to foil their plans. The second half also suffers from a clunky romance with Shruti Haasan, which feels shallow and contrived after the intensity and passion of the earlier romance between Sathya and Deepthi.

In spite of my reservations about the characterisation and the relatively predictable second half, Yevadu is still a film that entertains. It’s all much larger than life, but the action scenes are well done and Sathya’s inventive methods of revenge are excellent. The various villains are mainly comical rather than particularly intimidating, although some of the minions are nicely evil, while the excessive over dramatisation is just fun! If you can leave logic behind, embrace the absurdity, and revel in revenge then Yevadu could be the perfect masala watch. 3 stars.

Bachchan (2013)

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Bachchan

Bachchan was recommended to me by numerous people when I went to watch Ugramm a few weeks ago, and since I read that the film had won a number of awards in India plus it starred the usually pretty awesome Sudeep Kiccha I thought it would be worth tracking down on DVD.  But when I started to watch it I was very disappointed.  After about 20 minutes I just couldn’t watch any more relentless and seemingly pointless violence or blatant sexism and had to give up.   It took another two attempts before I managed to get more than 30 minutes into the film, and I spent most of that time wondering why this film had been recommended to me! But then I got further in, finally reached the excellent second half, and realised exactly why this film had appealed to so many people – even me eventually.  It does get immeasurably better in the second half, and looking back the opening scenes make more sense in retrospect, although I still feel a less chauvinistic approach would have made them easier viewing. However, if you can make it past the first thirty minutes, there really is a lot to like about Bachchan.

The film opens with a slugfest between Bharat (Sudeep Kiccha) and various members of the police force in a small police station. No-one is able to stop him as he smashes his way through the police station and ultimately kills Inspector Mahesh Deshpande (Ashish Vidyarthi) before escaping on a police bike.  Bharat then easily outwits the chasing police cars and heads to a hospital where he proceeds to defenestrate one of the doctors, Dr. Srinivasa Iyengar (Nasser) and escapes yet again.  This time though, we know he is going to get caught just as soon as a lorry full of water bottles appears in the middle of the shot.

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So once in custody for committing two murders (no mention of the destruction to property and general menace to society he represents) Bharat proceeds to tell his story to the investigating officer Vijay Kumar (Jagapathi Babu).  Seen in flashback, previously Bharat was a nice, happy (although rather patronising) real estate agent who was trying to be a force for good in the world, when he found himself hounded by a superstitious police officer and an obsessive doctor.  Inspector Deshpande fuelled jealousy in Bharat’s fiancée Anjali (Parul Yadav) by pointing out Bharat’s interest in a client’s daughter at every opportunity.  To be fair, Monica (Tulip Joshi) does seem to turn up everywhere and does show an unhealthy interest in a man whose attentions are otherwise engaged, but Bharat claims that this harassment was his motivation behind killing Despande.  Meanwhile Dr Iyengar sealed his fate when he refused medical assistance to Anjali and Bharat decided that he too had to die.

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The problem I have with these opening scenes isn’t that the story is trite and clichéd, but that it’s all so completely overdone.  Both Despande and Iyengar are terrible caricatures while Anjali appears as a woman with absolutely no self-worth.  Bharat bribes her with chocolate when she accuses him of being rude to her at work (which he was), and when she accuses him of spending time with Monica, he has only to click his fingers and she immediately forgives him all.  There is a reason behind all of this but since it’s not explained until much later in the film, it does make for uncomfortable viewing first time round.

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The first half isn’t all bad though.  There is a novel threat to a collection of flower pots, which is a welcome touch of humour and Sudeep is eminently watchable even when he’s being a complete pillock.  P. Ravi Shankar is also mildly amusing as the thug attempting to muscle in on Bharat’s business, and there is also plenty of excellent dorky uncle dancing in this song.

The film starts to improve when it’s gradually revealed that the story Bharat has told the police is a complete fabrication – hence the terrible characterisations in the first half.  The real Anjali proves to be a perfectly sensible and normal woman, while the other characters are nicely ambiguous until the real truth emerges.  There are plenty of twists and turns before we get there though and the second half turns out to be the out and out action thriller I was expecting from the start.  Throughout it all, Sudeep outclasses everyone else with chameleon-like changes of his character, and his performance is just enough to make up for the dodgy dialogue in the first half.  He does bring to life the film’s ‘Bachchan’ in Big B angry young man persona, although there is more to his character than just a generalised grudge against the world.  I’m presuming that director Shashank wanted to make a kind of homage to Amitabh Bachchan as there are many mentions of Big B and his films throughout, but he’s probably most referenced in this song with the bewilderingly badly dressed Tulip Joshi.  Poor Tulip – she really doesn’t come out of any of this well at all.

Bhavana makes a brief appearance as Anjali’s sister Ashwini, but probably the best performance from the three romance interests is from Parul Yadav.  Her character is more developed and despite the terrible beginning she does make a better showing in the second half.  Most of the rest of the support cast are fine but they are mainly there either to provide fodder for Bharat’s rage or to add layers of confusion to the plot, and are never any more than two-dimensional at best.  However the fight scenes are well choreographed even if they lean heavily towards standard Southern Indian tropes and the climax is satisfyingly OTT.

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The concept of Bachchan is good, but it is let down by the script in the first half (or perhaps just very bad subtitles) and a tendency to rely on standard filmi clichés.  Although the second half of the film is entertaining and very watchable, sitting through the first half to get there requires patience and perseverance.  Still, if you can make it through the first half hour, the rest up to the interval is ridiculous enough to be amusing and it is worth hanging in there to reach the excellent second half if you can.  I’d give the first half of Bachchan 2 stars and the second half 4 stars which gives an average of 3 – that seems about right overall.  Worth watching for Sudeep but I’d recommend leaving your brain behind for the first hour.