Reviews

If I were to go on a long journey, with few prospects for entertainment, this would definitely be one of the movies that get packed in my portable hard disk. Just for its pure entertainment value, and definitely not for any award winning performances.

Very rarely does a director strike the right balance of comedy and drama, especially between the either side of the intermission. How often do we head into the intermission feeling all light and happy only to get drenched in heavy waterworks-sentiment in the second half! Venkatesh forms the backbone of the comedy track with Prakash Raj, Suhasini and Chandra Mohan donning the drama mantle. Aarti Agarwal in her debut movie manages to look pretty and shed the right amount of tears at the right times. But the revelation of the movie must be Sunil, who has given a subdued yet howlarious performance. A special mention must be made of the witty dialog by Trivikram.

A wholesome fun family movie for all seasons!

One might get the feeling that the movie is once in a lifetime event after seeing the hype and hoopla surrounding the release and the subsequent record-breaking run it had at the box office. But the movie sadly fails to deliver on many counts - tight story line, memorable music and, for me the essential ingredient of any entertaining movie, a good comedy track.

Though it's all too well known that we are not sticklers for realism in our movies, we don't complain a spoonful of it! I mean, an undercover cop going berserk, in his imitation of a Mongol barbarian, with the poor rowdy folks was a bit over the top, to put it mildly. Probably Mahesh Babu was stretching the macho-ism thread little too thin. I still feel his 'Okkadu' is way better than 'Athadu' or 'Pokiri'. Ileana's is a fresh face on the horizon with a neatly chiseled body to boot! Acting is probably not her forte, but who cares, in an out and out hero-focused movie. It's probably due to the sheer number of films he does, but Prakash Raj is getting too predictable, either in a mean, calculating villain's character or in a caring, compassionate father's character.

The movie has its positives too - slick photography and exaggerating fight sequences that appeal to the large masses. And it also tries to shock the prudes by showing glimpses of BDSM and snorting! An entertaining three hours but falls short of the status of a legend, its records notwithstanding.