Srimanthudu : Movie Analysis

Introduction:

When I first saw the teaser, I was surprised to see a movie based on 'Village Adoption' which isn't really a fancy material, and that too really quick (Village Adoption is a philanthropic program, started only in 2015. Not much popularized really. People knew about it. But you know, not much.). So I really expected promising  story line and novelty here. I believe that Khaleja (2010) movie revived Mahesh in a good way (Even though the movie failed commercially). He's been craving for some freshness in his movies since then. He did, 1-Nenokkadine, SVSC hoping to offer something new, which is really appreciable. But with the movie '1-N..' giving disappointing result (fair enough!), he quickly shifted gears and wanted to get away with another mass masala hit like Dookudu (2010), so teamed up with Sreenu Vaitla again for Aagadu (2014) which turned out to be a Huge Disaster. It's bad for producers, but not so much for Mahesh. It put him on  right track now with this movie &Bramhotsavam (2016) on the line and I'm only expecting good things from the latter.

Description: (Although Srimanthudu isn't really rich enough to afford any spoilers :( Avoid this if you haven't watched the movie)

Movie opens with traditional title cards, quickly followed by a traditionally traditional introduction song with Harshavardhan (Mahesh Babu), son of Ravikanth (Jagapathi Babu) celebrating SriRamaNavami, with a really splendid looking background there (for a employers colony celebration). Now 'Rama Rama' is a beautifully pictured song with relatable lyrics, representing similarities with Harsha's character, but remained as a mere introduction song. (Could've made a great pre-climax song. But don't worry we have a 'Dimma Tirige' dance song there with totally meaningless lyrics.) So, our Harsha is not just a Srimanthudu (Wealthy Man), but one with a kind heart and helping nature, still figuring out his life. Then Harsha meets Charusheela (Sruthi Hassan) who is seriously trying to avoid getting fat by helping her native village. She..she's trying to help her village. So she is studying some Rural Development related course. Harsha likes the idea of helping the society and the benefit of being slim as well. So he joins her college (conveniently, college admissions were open throughout the year, so that Charu and Harsha could be classmates). Harsha is a multi-tasking intelligent kid who dances for romantic duets, while studying seriously enough to draw EG drawings successfully (THAT is some difficult sh*t) and be able to design constructions later on.

Suddenly, a bad businessman with a bad father (He himself said so..) threatens Harsha's father about some business tender (forget it.) Now Harsha comes to rescue. How innovatively Harsha deals with this problem, left me awe-struck (also with a facepalm). While this is happening here, there are some serious problems bothering the village, Devarakota. Narayana (Rajendra Prasad) is a good man who tries to help village people by actually doing nothing. In the same village, there is Sashi (Sampath) , one more bad businessman. He troubles the village in every way. He's born that way. The village situation is somewhat like the Bali village from Khaleja, keepingcount of people still living there while suffering from bad businessmen. Now by a great coincidence, our Harsha's native village is also Devarakota, so as our Charu's and also their friend Apparao's (Vennela Kishore). And there is another big coincidence that the bad father of first bad businessman is brother of the second bad businessman (Of course!). So basically everyone is from Devarakota. World is small, like Harsha said.

So our Harsha sets off to Devarakota on a stylish bicycle, but gets tired & takes a bus later. On the way there is some serious twist, that I badly want to reveal. So, here the bad father's son wants to find Harsha and kill him who is travelling in a bus. So he stops a bus to find a guy, but boom! he is not Harsha. Audience shocks, Koratala Siva rocks. If you're shocked, don't worry there is a quick flashback to explain (Seriously!). It was some other guy they want to kill, travelling in a bus same day, same time but, from Devarakota. Normally remote villages have a single bus to and fro. Anyhow, Harsha in the other bus, to Devarakota at same time, comes to rescue. The coincidences keeps coming, huh! So there is some anti-gravity fight next and it's Interval.

You've seen half of the film, but you have barely scratched the surface. It's time to get into some serious sequence of coincidences. So, Harsha reaches the village, starts clicking some pics for his Facebook. Coincidentally, at the same time, some lady stumbles carrying water from a faraway river. She's doing it for many days. But she felt weak on this fine day. Harsha, as usually goes to help her and takes her home. But there is some jobless old man sitting there. When Harsha asks, "Why would you let the lady go that far, for water?" He starts tattling all his family troubles. (Come on, man he was just making conversation. You don't have tell your whole story.) Harsha takes a nap at a temple, and the kind priest there takes him to our Narayana, who gives Harsha free accommodation (in Harsha's own house, FYI). So then, his friend Apparao visits the village, coincidentally, so that we have a comedian there.

So HERE, the whole Village Adoption thing starts to happen (Finally!). Harsha starts to build schools, roads with all the knowledge, he gained from his college, which I believe he didn't attend more than a semester, or even less. With all these renovations happening, Sashi is not pleased, but coincidentally his father wants some development to happen in the village(?), not district or anything, just that village, so he can save his MP seat. But later, Harsha destroys a liquor stall and gives a straight warning to Sashi and his hefty sidekicks. Sashi is just pissed off, so kidnaps Charusheela. Guess what? Harsha comes to rescue. He performs another fight, where he kicks all the brawny goons into the ground. Even though they all look muscular than any WWE wrestler, bites dust with one punch each, and Harsha doesn't break a sweat. With all kinds of mess happening in the village, Narayana's brother, upon pressure from his wife, had to leave the village like many, to live with his son, living in the city. Harsha goes to convince her and did he ever failed?. Okay, that was a good scene, relatively. Now Charusheela is happy with Harsha's machismo + kind heart, commits to him (It's about time.) So they go build a colorful set and starts dancing to a sick beat.

My god! This is never ending.  I'm getting tired. Okay, Harsha starts to fight for a illegally occupied river, but there lies a danger and Harsha gets stabbed (Finally, someone was able to get through his sphere of heroism). He gets hospitalized in the same hospital he renovated, by the same doctor he brought there. Life is a beach :'( Some serious sentiment scenes follow. It gets all emotional and heart-touching, you'll start crying like a baby. (Not really, I'm Just Kidding). The sentiment scenes are not at all harmful. You won't feel involved at all. Now Harsha upon his father's request, goes back to the city and takes over his dad's business. Now THERE is some conflict. Harsha, trying to compromise with his life and pickup something he never wanted to do. Here our director, skips possibly touching scenes and brings our Harsha back to the village. We're sitting there thinking like, why the hell he went home, in first place. In the end our Harsha KILLS everyone and ends it all with a huge explosion. I really didn't expect this movie to end with a scene of explosion. That was something unexpected.

Script was really loose and sloppy. There's no scene, you'd wonder what going to happen next. Just flat. Movie doesn't focus on anything. It neither stress about father-son struggle, nor the need of saving villages. Instead of developing a novel story around the theme of Village Adoption, it is simply used as a new plot element in the old story of son going to his father's village and solving everyone's troubles. Same old, same old.

The good things about movie are, Production Quality, Cinematography and Mahesh himself. All the scenes look just beautiful & parts of it are just magnificent. Mahesh looks youthful and gives a convincing performance. Basically the whole emphasis was on his character, and he did his job perfectly. If the narrator had concentrated on other characters as well, it would have had a stronger character setting. But unfortunately, that didn't happened and that is why all the emotional scenes felt frigid and lacked sensibility. DSP hasn't really delivered his best in this movie. Re-recording was kind of old-school and didn't really helped to keep one engaged. The movie really suffered from irksome dialogues and, songs like "Charuseela" and "Dimma Tirige" doesn't really suit the mood or the characters.

Thing is, in attempt to please everyone, movie makers are being unfair to the movie itself, adding all superfluous stuff, leaving the movie, a big mess. Especially, with movie having a thin story line, it got stretched, to maintain the movie length, and had the gaps filled with some silly scenes. First-Half didn't have any separate comedy track, which was good for the story. But in the latter half, they had to bring in Ali, although he does nothing. And there are a bunch of useless characters all over the movie like Harsha's brother, god knows why he's there.

I didn't understand why, Harsha won't address his father with 'Nanna' or 'Dad'.  Was the writer trying to show the emotional gap between the son and the father. If it is, it makes no sense. How we address our father is something habitual, like  from childhood, right?

Expectation : A cool family movie with INSPIRING message.

Result : Disappointment.

Comment : Could've named "The Great Coincidences".

Overall the movie isn't a bad movie. It's one of those movies, which starts as a nice idea, but gets messed up, with all the so-called commercial elements and hit movie formulas interrupting the flow. Also the story and narration is right out flat &  predictable. We've seen NTR's Brindavanam, Pawan's Attarintiki Daredi and now Mahesh's Srimanthudu. They seem like a real nice family movie, but actually overloaded with heroism and strained sentiment. But they gross money, break  records, may be win some awards, as well. After all, the movie is a good deal for Mahesh, a relief from his back-to-back box-office disappointments. So with this energy, hope Mahesh will deliver a honest family movie in form of Bramhotsavam.

P.S. : It's not మధ్యపానం. It's 'మద్యపానం' అరోగ్యానికి హానికరం. Yup! Some scenes were really gripping, that I was able to notice, that tiny little word of advice in the corner.

Baahubali : Movie Analysis

Introduction :

It's the movie that telugu audience have been eagerly waiting for more than 3 years. When it finally arrived, it definitely has grown into a movie that will represent Indian Cinema, all over the world. You must know that during production of ANY movie, it kind of downgrades from what it should be due to a multitude of reasons. I mean, even your favorite movie could & should have been speckless. But very few directors are able to bring that well-nigh perfect output, for people to watch. Unquestionably, Rajamouli is one of them for us. The way he developed the supposedly small projects like 'Maryada Ramanna' & 'Eega' into sensational movies, will tell you all about that. Same happened here. The movie outgrew itself. I believe that is the reason behind the bloated budget of the movie. Well the movie started making table-profit (already covered the budget of the sequel too) in the first week of first part itself. So, all happiez there :)

#LiveTheEpic

Coming to our side, the audience side. We don't really care about the money or time they spent on the movie or many hardships they been through to make the movie what it is, do we? Come on, let's be real, what really matters to us, is Are We Entertained? (If positive, AWEsome. Negative?, awful then). So let's forget about the fact that the movie is groundbreaking in the scope of HIGH BUDGET MOVIES*.

Let's operate on the movie, considering it is a common kind and we'll rip it open.

Description : [No Wild Spoilers]

The movie kicked off with that scene, the one you'd expect after watching the trailer. It felt kinda flat having seen it in the trailer already, but what can they do, they have to drag us into theaters, right. So the movie showed off its Budget & VFX for a while through magnificent frames and picturesque locations. Well, some transitions in graphics surely fell short and looked dull on the big screen, but many still frame shots will make you feel, that sacred Hollywood Movie Experience :)  It was painful to see those pale effects coming in between those good ones making it less beautiful. But you can enjoy the tasteful photography and beautiful surroundings like those waterfalls, mountains and the forest location is a delight.

Even though you've seen Sivagami (Ramyakrishna), Sivudu (Prabhas) and Amma (Rohini) appeared on the screen and most of the scenes in trailer have passed, story really takes off only with entry of Avantika (Tamannah), who actually did a sincere effort to lift the intensity of the scenes with those sharp expressions and her glamour was no harm :P. Devasena (Anushka) had a brief but strong appearance in the movie, mostly as a means of moving plot forward. Aslaam Khan (Sudeep) appears on the screen with that small guest role (will reprise in part II) only to introduce our brave but sad Kattappa (Satyaraj) to us. Bhallaladeva (Rana) entry was a traditional villain strength exhibition scene but he enhanced it with intense dialogues and those wicked looks. Bijjaldeva (Nasserr) and Badhra (Sesh Adivi) contributed to the devilry with their presence. You'll get used to the effects and feel more natural as the cameras wander through the streets of the Mahishmathi Kingdom.

After what it felt like a series of somewhat pesky scenes in exciting locations (those explanatory ones and the duet song, meh!), Sivudu sets foot, on the land of Mahishmathi Kingdom (Kind of jumped into it, actually) and sets fire on screen (No, seriously). The whole 'Erecting the statue' scene was pictured with such a grandeur, you can see the effort of team behind. All the classical dancers, cultural artists shown, really things like that show movie maker's intention to bring depth to a scene and make you feel involved.

After a set of events leading to an awesome beheading scene (that was cool, really), movie flashbacks to the story of Amarendra Baahubali (Prabhas), nephew/step-son of Sivagami and cousin of Bhallaladeva. Well I can assure that you will revel RamyaKrishna's performance as Sivagami. She was so fabulous, you'll know why Rajamouli was praising her so much in the audio function. So the story moves on with Baahubali and Bhallaladeva reveailng a secretly approaching war after an exotic item song, of course. The competition between the cousins for throne will take a much serious turn being decided to judge based on their performances in the unexpectedly erupted war of Mahishmathi Kingdom with the approaching troops of a Tribal Warlord, Kalakeya (Prabhakar).

Well the rest is an epic war, conveying the difference between a warrior and a king.  Movie ends the flashback, explaining everyone, the greatness of Baahubali and leaves you waiting for The Conclusion.

Conclusion :

Movie really utilized its team, no doubt. You can't complain about acting performances. Actors were picked carefully to fit right in. Screenplay would have been more gripping without those duet and item songs, but they wanted those and you can understand why.  Dialogues have been set in a semi-imperial tone. Many scenes could have used more crisp in dialogues or maybe even no dialogues. Seriously, few scenes could have gathered more intensity without those small informative remarks by the characters. (ఎంత silent గా ఉంటే , అంత violent అన్నమాట, no kidding). Art department excelled in every possible way. VFX, like I mentioned is a mix of excellence and mediocrity. Great photography and impressive camera work (including the item song). BGMs and re-recording is a real asset to the movie and carried the energy of the movie all the way. Don't tell me that movie didn’t give you goosebumps somewhere.

Now let's go back to the fact that the movie is only the part I of a duology made with a budget of 250cr rupees and what we're comparing it with are those Hollywood movies with humongous budget (like n times 250cr) provided with experienced teams. If this movie had no flaws, then it would only mean all those Hollywood people are fools. But they're not. Hence this movie is precious, honorable and can & will be embraced as a great movie in Indian Cinema.

Expectation : Great Movie.

Result : No Disappointment.

Comment : First/Best of its Kind.

*Baahubali is evidently groundbreaking in the scope of HIGH BUDGET MOVIES, considering the pace Indian movie is moving forward in terms of willingness to place money on the movie content, instead of the other stuff (You know, all the heroism, but no substance). I mean, when it comes to those High Budget Movies, film makers gets kinda affright (well, reasonable) and focuses more on showing off the machoness of the hero and his supernatural abilities (Not reasonable & I don't mean those actual superhero movies like Krrish, which in fact failed doing the same :)) . Even though this movie is no exception for that heroism, item song etc., the movie is significantly propelled by story and the money is spent in the right way. Thank God.

But I'm sure Baahubali is just The Beginning.

P.S. : I kinda disliked Rajamouli's earlier semi-historical film 'Magadheera' for its too much focus on the 'other stuff' and was prepared to treat this one too, the same way on those grounds. But the movie is clearly of much higher rank.