Parugu...

Run Run Run

Before starting anything on the movie, I should appreciate the director for his aptness in selecting the title for the movie. “Parugu”, SubbLakshmi(PoonamBajwa) Parugus with her lover Babu on her wedding day, Neelakantha, SubbaLakshmis father(Prakash Raj) parugu to find her daughter, Babu’s friends pargu to escape from Neelkhanta, Krishna, one of Babus friends (Arujun) parugus to catch Meena (Sheela), Neelakhanta wants Meena to be with him in his parugu as Meena happens to be his second daughter and he does not want her to make the second parugu movie...... All in all, a perfect title for the movie. Yeah, I am not going to tell anything more about the movie, by now you got the whole story there, only thing you should watch on screen is, how Arjun manages to marry Meena.

Puri - Badri, Baaachi
VV Vinayak -Aadi, ChennakesavaReddy
Karunakaran - ToliPrema, Yuvakudu
Sukumar - Arya, Jagadam
Vn Aditya - Manasanta Nuvve, SreeRAm
PrabuDeva – Nuvvostaanante..., Pournami
Bhaskar - Bommarillu, Parugu
Yes all the above movies and directors have one similarity, First movie a blockbuster and the second a flop or an average movie. You take whatever inference you want from this statement, but I suspect now it’s become a tradition and we can safely ignore the second flick by a block buster debutant director. Now when you have two movies from the same director they are ought to be compared (though i strictly wanted to avoid thisL), Bomarillu has all the ingredients which are must for a successful movie, on top of all it has Hasini (Jenilia), Parugu lacks this character. Though Arjun did a good job in the first half, the second half is little too elastic and plot got slipped from the directors hands. You cannot expect any titillating scenes between the leads, as they both don’t even face each other for most of the first half. Not a commercially viable mantra!

Songs average, Female lead average, Comedy average, everything is average about this movie, movie becomes very flat at very regular intervals. Arjun, not very charming, Sheela, not at all attractive, tough she managed to give proper expressions. Prakash Raj looks ok, JayaSudha not required at all for that small character. Bhasker tried to show the counter side of Bommarillu, the fathers version of emotions when his kids don’t understand his love towards them, but he should have done more work on the story and screenplay. Can watch it once.

Parugu: 3 out of 5
Sastry

Kantri....

Typical example for another “Formula” movie, the only variation from the standard formula is, it does not have a punch tag to its title. Looks like the debutant director Mehar Ramesh wants to make it doubly sure that he wants to hit the bulls eye with his first venture in telugu film industry so he doesn’t want to experiment at all and plainly adopt the standard winning equation. After watching the movie, just dig into your past movie watching experience, you will find lot of similar films and why not they are based on the same “Formula”.

The movie opens up with same old violence where PothuRaju alias PR (PrakashRaj) and his friend Seshu(Ashish Vidyarthi) kills their friend and his family and steals one crore money from them. In these scenes you will observe one small kid who is supposedly the victim’s son, appearing here and there in those shots. In the process of escaping, PothuRaju leaves behind his wife and son and run away with the money. Ultimately PothuRaju becomes PR, a multi millionaire and have his operation in HongKong and have Seshu in India to run all his dark business. Don’t ask me how this happened, there is no explanation in the film as well, i know there need not be any explanation in these kind of formula movies. As you can expect, he has lot of enemies as well, like Dasu (Shiyaji Shinde) in India and few others in HongKong. This background of Mr PR and yeah he PrakashRaj looked awesome in the movie in this role.

Now coming to our HERO, Kranti (Yeah his name is Kranti in the movie)”Clear ga vinte Kranti ni, Confused ga vinte Kantri ni”, that’s what he says about his himself. He is a new chap in PR’s Indian gang and as expected, he is young, dynamic, fast, macho ( I am not sure about this, but he managed to beat a lot of goons to dust in fraction of seconds). As expected he manages to steal PR’s attention with all his efforts and proves his dynamism in HongKong as well by beating all those Chinese Marshal Arts specialists. In certain circumstances, in need of money, our hero approaches Sehsu and he rejects to give any money to Kranti and Kranti decides to part away from PRs gang and establish a new one. And he approaches Dasu and accepts a contract to kill PR. This brings PR back to India and Kantri encounters with PR within point blank range. Then suddenly out of the Mr DaivaSahatam(Kota) tells something which gives all of us some kind of ripple and Yeah the current passes to PR also(I know by this time you all have expected what the twist is). Now in the second half there is completely a confused story which is difficult to narrate and i am not planning to do it either.

Did i miss something here? Yeah the Glam Dolls, again as the standard formula says, “when you direct a movie with all the hero centric action packed, you need to have min 2 galm dolls to make audience titillate and use them to drag the movie by 30 more mins in the form of songs”. And this time Hansika and Taneesha took this responsibly on their soft and smooth shoulders and did their part to shake it move it in the songs and few scenes here and there. As the first lead actress Hansika got little extra scenes in Singapore etc etc.

As the standard formula says, you need to have lot of fights in the movie and you have plenty of them, as the standard formula says, you need to have couple of comedians , tough they have got nothing to do with the movie and there scenes are to be used when you think audience need some rest from your action packed fights and dialogue hit scenes. You have Sunil, Aleeeeeeee, Bramhi for this. It need a special mention of “Spider Reddy” the indian SpiderMan which i enjoyed. As you can expect NTR does his dance movements well and the songs look nice on screen. If you don’t have anything to do at home, go give a watch.

Kantri: ** (two stars out of five)

Sastry

Michael Madana Kamaraju............

The title reminds the old movie with Kamal acting in 4 different roles and spreading lot of comedy across the movie. Anyways now we are talking about the new movie where there is no Kamal, where there are no 4 characters, where there is no Ilayaraja music.. all in all its a new Michael Madana kamaraju, read on.

Madan(Sreekant) doesn’t believe in love and hates love and lovers, he always says that Love and lovers are trash, where as his cousin Kamaraju is always in search of love. The movie opens with a new format of visit look over a prospective bride for Kamaraju and ultimate Kamarajus parents asks Madan to select a girl for him and affirms that only Madan approval can call them back from US of A and fly off.

The movie suddenly moves from Hyderabad to Goa where Madan catches up with Charmy and Kamaraju with Asha Saini. Yes, that correct Sunil is paired up with Asha Saini in this movie, a little fat Saini with very fat Sunil. MeanWhile Bramhanandam enters the show and does his part to render comedy to the slow paced movie. In some circumstances Charmy becomes close to Madan and Madan also start liking her but because he already conveys his stand point on love he hesitates to tell the same to Charmy. By the time Sunil falls deep into Asha Saini he does some “trick” to let Madan come open about his love towards Charmi and approve Asha as his girl. However this trick has a side effect which actually introduces Michael (Prabhudeva). Michael is not a very good person and he wants to take the “trick’s” advantage and wants to marru charmi for her money. Now the rest you can imagine, how Madan breaks Michaels net to marry Carmi is the rest of the story.

Second half of the movie really has a parade of all the ace comedians we have in telugu industry, we have Kota, Ali, VenuMadhav, MallikarjunaRao, Kovai Sarala, Kondalavalsa, etc.. however this really doesn’t help the director to fill the movie with comedy. The script fall very dry towards the end of the movie and it hardly makes you laugh. Bramhanadam is watchable as usual with Dhoom spoofs here and there. There is lot of skin show contributed by Asha Saini which may be a drawback for family audience. Charmi is OK in the film. Prabhudeva has one dance number which he performs well and is acting is also upto the mark. Sreekanth with his new hair style looks different and does his part for the movie with no great story and punch.

All in all if you want to go and watch Bramhi for 15-20mins, please go and buy a ticket. Otherwise please sit at home and enjoy any weekend movie that comes on television.Michel

Madana Kamaraju.. * (one on five)

Sastry