Tag Archives: Shruti Haasan

Oh My Friend

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Chandu and Siri have been ‘Best Friends Forever’ since meeting in primary school and Oh My Friend deals with the way their close friendship impacts on other relationships in their lives. While the film seems to follow a fairly predictable path, it’s still entertaining with excellent performances by the two leads.  Siddharth and Shruti Haasan make an attractive couple and bring plenty of energy to the screen. It’s the debut film for director Venu Sriram and while he’s played it safe with the story, the songs are excellent and the whole film looks beautiful.  Another bonus is only one very small comedy track involving Ali by himself, with no other irritating comedy uncles in sight.

Chandu is a wannabe rock star and both his mother and Siri provide him with plenty of encouragement. His father on the other hand isn’t so sure about the whole idea and disapproves of his son’s career choice. Perhaps his displeasure isn’t too surprising as Chandu doesn’t seem to take his chosen profession very seriously, despite walking around everywhere with his guitar slung over his shoulder. Even when he does get a gig with a band to perform in a competition in Kerala, after the competition is over they seem to go their separate ways.

The whole disapproving father story works its way to the inevitable conclusion without really impacting on the rest of the story and as a result doesn’t seem to be a necessary part of the plot. Tanikella Bharani does his usual dad thing very competently although I did keep getting distracted by his glasses which looked to be constantly sliding down his nose.

Siri appears to be a classical dance teacher although at one point there was a proposed trip for her to Chennai to study, so perhaps she had more plans than I was able to understand. More importantly though, I think this is the first time I have seen a heroine who plays a dance instructor in a movie who can actually dance!  Shruti has some great moves, and gets the chance to show them off in a couple of songs with Siddharth. The choreographer must have been delighted to have a heroine able to keep up and the songs are the high points of the film. Not just due to the dancing either. The music is catchy and well suited to the plot and it helps that both Siddharth and Shruti sing a couple of the songs which makes them sound very natural.

When Chandu meets and falls in love with Reetu (Hansika Motwani) he forgets Siri in his obsession with his new girlfriend. I like this part of the story as I think everyone has probably had a friend exactly like this who vanished when they started a new relationship. Siri is left alone to do all the things she used to do with her BFF and unsurprisingly feels abandoned since she doesn’t seem to have any other friends. However, she doesn’t mope around too long, but gets on with her life and becomes engaged to Uday (Navdeep), an NRI living in the USA. Uday turns up unexpectedly in Hyderabad just as Chandu realises that he cannot live without his BFF and moves back into Siri’s life as if he never left. There is crackling chemistry between Chandu and Siri so it’s not surprising that no one, not even their parents, believes that the two are just good friends. This misconception leads to problems with the couple’s respective partners who understandably feel shut out of the close relationship Chandu and Siri share and everyone has to deal with the consequences.

Hanskia is relatively inoffensive here as Reetu whose only real characteristic is that she is unable to make a decision. I think there is some explanation for it in the dialogue, but I really didn’t care since there wasn’t enough development of her character to make her more than just ‘the other woman’. For most of the film Reetu either looks at Chandu as if she’s starving and he’s a bar of chocolate, or as if he’s just taken her last chocolate away – not really too taxing. Venu Sriram wisely doesn’t allow Hansika to dance at all, except in one comedy scene which works out well. Ali pops up in Kerala as a guide but his time on-screen is short and his initial appearance is quite amusing so I didn’t mind this rather truncated comedy track. Navdeep plays the very one-dimensional character of Uday as well as he can with such limited material to work with. He has little opportunity to do much more than glower every time he sees Siri and Chandu together and it’s not until near the end that Uday has a little more personality to display.

Neither Uday and Siri nor Chandu and Reetu have any chemistry together, and their scenes lack any of the spark and excitement that characterises those between Chandu and Siri. A little more investment in the characters of Reetu and Uday would help to make them more appealing and make their relationships more interesting. Since this isn’t the case, the film belongs to Siddharth and Shruti and they do make a great couple. This is the third film I’ve seen with Shruti Haasan and it’s definitely her best performance so far. She has plenty of vivacity and Siri is a likeable character, although her behaviour in Kerala is a little overdone.  Siddharth is charming and while his role is one he has played many times before, he does play the loveable scamp character well. The styling is good for all the characters too and I like that Siddharth wore his T-shirts more than once giving the idea of a somewhat struggling musician a little more credibility.

The end is rather disappointing with some long drawn out speeches which didn’t have much impact, but otherwise Oh My Friend is an entertaining if not very demanding film. I enjoyed it more than I was expecting to and it does have plenty of good moments. Worth a watch for the songs by Rahul Raj, good cinematography by Vijay K. Chakravathy and excellent performances from Shruti and Siddharth.

Anaganaga O Dheerudu

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There has been so much hype about this film; the Disney involvement, the special effects, the budget. Warning: there are lots of spoilers ahead, but this IS a Disney film so you should know what to expect.

The story is simple – an evil queen lays waste to an idyllic kingdom and the only hope for survival lies in the hands of a child mystic and her blind bodyguard.

The film opens with very Disney style animated credits, and then we immediately see a warrior pursued through a spooky forest before being made into a sort of zombie, his mind controlled by Irendri the evil queen with the Medusa hair. So there was already a question of whether this was aimed at being a kids film or a high fantasy epic. And that is the problem – this film doesn’t know what it is and as a result, is a bit unsatisfying in either genre.

The screenplay relies heavily on flashbacks. There’s a flashback about Moksha (the mystic child played by Baby Harshita). Shortly after we meet Yodha (Sid) he pauses for a flashback about his lost love (Priya, played by Shruti Haasan). Then when he and Moksha leave on their journey, Yodha stops for a really long flashback that explains his history, more about his lost love and how he became blind. Then towards the end of the film we get more long flashbacks explaining Irendri. It halted the momentum of the story and these could have been condensed or the information conveyed by other means.

While on the subject of how Yodha was blinded. If your eyes are poked out with a metallic pointy thing, they do not grow back changing their iris colour to blue. They would be white sightless orbs covered in scar tissue, or all the fluid drains out and they shrivel up like raisins. It does have to be said that Sid was good at playing blind but the contact lenses were a bit distracting, as were the constant close ups of his ears.

Some scenes were shot on location and the natural light was particularly unforgiving on the set constructions at the beach camp. Things looked too new and perfect; there was no wear and tear or mends on the snail shaped structures, the lighting was too obvious and modern. It sometimes looked cheap and fake, and more suitable to a kids tv show than a high fantasy epic. The wonky papier mache buildings at the village looked like they should be inhabited by Munchkins. When scenes shifted to interiors, things worked much better as the diffuse lighting was kinder to all the painted polystyrene and fibreglass props. The peacock theme, started as a beautiful costume worn by Shruti was well worked into the colour and decor of her room. Irendri’s palace fortress looked great – there was a commitment to the snake theme and it looked substantial and daunting. The scenes in the spooky forest with the bird demons were quite effective and  helped build some tension. Moksha’s special gift was shown by her ability to create magical butterflies. Oh so many butterflies. We were grateful she wasn’t obsessed with My Little Pony or unicorns.

The costumes would have looked great as sketches but some of them didn’t work as something an actor had to be able to move freely in. Poor Lakshmi Manchu must have developed thighs of steel as she had to power up the steps to Irendri’s throne dragging metres of fabric that we could see was catching or getting stuck.  Some of her outfits were just insane, particularly the shoulder details which were of epic proportions.

Sid’s outfits seemed to be a cross between leftovers from Mu Lan, a bit of D’Artagnan and a dash of Joseph’s Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. And while some costumes were really beautiful, some of the outfits Sid and Shruti had to wear were just plain fugly. There were too many fabrics cobbled together, too many ruffles and frills, and again the feeling the costume was wearing them.

The final confrontation between good and evil occurs during a lunar eclipse and culminates in a fight between Yodha and Irendri – who morphs into a giant medusa squid. Well actually she seems to be multiple snakes joined together but the effect is squid like. Sid performs some amazing stunts and acrobatics, the lighting is moody and effective, and then we have to wait for ages as the CGI team show off their monster before the fight starts up again. It was strangely boring despite Sid clearly giving it his all. We both thought of the scene in Magadheera where Bhairava has to kill 100 men – We knew already how his character would die, we knew it was riddled with special effects (not all of them great) and we knew it was just plain impossible and yet that was edge of the seat stuff because of the editing, the music and the implacable pace. In contrast, this was unexpectedly pedestrian and didn’t get any emotional response from us. We did have ample time to notice that the medusa squid was frequently shot from what can only described as an upskirting angle (albeit there was no skirt).

So what were the successes?

Good performances by a charismatic cast (although we don’t really get all the fuss about Baby Harshita) who did all they could with a script that was lacking. Sid was charming and easily handled the comedy skits, the romance and the action sequences. Lakshmi Manchu made Irendri evil and despicable – a proper cartoon villain and a near relative of the evil queen in Snow White. Shruti was decorative and enigmatic, and had great chemistry with Sid.

The hair snake. Irendri would occasionally take a (fully clothed) bath in blood or venom or something and consult an entity called Sarpini who happened to manifest as a snake made of Irendri’s hair. This magical snake also created its own tiara and other accessories as it spouted prophecies of doom. It worked well as a piece of animation and suited the medusa theme. Irendri’s designers really used the snake imagery well, and added lots of serpentine detail to her lair and her costumes.

Ali in drag. Who knew? Well he did a very good Carmen Miranda fruit bowl hat, and fetching nipple enhancing propellers that picked up speed when he was near Sid (you can catch a glimpse in the theatrical trailer). We liked his mermaid ensemble a lot.

The soundtrack worked well as a soundtrack, and the few songs are not really outstanding. Yodha has his own heroic theme, and that generally works although the 80s power guitar version was a bit incongruous.

Fabric. This film is one for the textile fanciers. And there is lots of sparkle.

With a lot more editing of the screenplay, a little restructuring of some scenes, and a decision as to whether they are aiming at kids or adults, this could be great. As it is, it’s a bit too dark to be a kids film, not substantial enough to be a grown up epic and just ends up being a bit wishy washy. The audience jeered at the songs, laughed at some of the dialogues, and as always Brahmi got the biggest cheer.