iSmart Shankar Review - Puri's old styled treatment garnished with a sci-fi element

iSmart Shankar Telugu Movie Review: Puri's old styled dish garnished with sci-fi elements

Premise: 

A convict, iSmart Shankar, is placed with a chip holding the memories of a cop in his head. With the memories in the chip that could erase iSmart Shankar’s own memories,  while he is on a hunt to find the killer to exact revenge. Will he be successful in finding the killer as his memories fade out gradually?

Enjoyable aspects:

> iSmart Shankar’s hyper active characterisation
> Ram’s energetic performance as iSmart Shankar
> Puri’s dialogues
> Mani Sharma’s music
> Crisp editing
> The sci-fi angle in the story

Distracting aspects:

> At places iSmart Shankar’s dialogues go overboard and unconvincing
> Fast paced with less detailing in the story scenarios puts off urban audience
> Couple songs that hinder the story flow
> The feel of already-seen(cliched) style of Puri’s taking
> No riveting conflict, everything seems to be solving itself for iSmart Shankar

Overall Impact: 

It is aimed only for entertainment. Story wise - easy to forget once we are out of the theatre, but not iSmart Shankar’s mannerisms. A thought of iSmart Shankar’s hyper activeness might put a giggle on your face - a commendable job from Puri in that one aspect.

Rating: 2.75/5

Cast: Ram Pothineni, Nabha Natesh, Nidhhi Agerwal, Satyadev Kancharana

Director: Puri Jagannadh

Story & Screenplay: Puri Jagannadh 

Genre: Action, Sci-fi, Comedy 

Music: Mani Sharma

Cinematography: Raj Thota

Editing: Junaid Siddiqui

Producer: Puri Jagannadh & Charmme Kaur

Language: Telugu

Oh Baby - 'An entertaining adorable movie' - Telugu Movie Review - Samantha Akkineni, Lakshmi, Nandini Reddy

Movie Name: Oh Baby
Genre: Family, Comedy, Fantasy, Drama
Cast: Samantha Akkineni, Lakshmi, Rajendra Prasad, Rao Ramesh, Naga Shaurya, Jagapathi Babu, Teja Sajja, Pragathi, Sunayana, Aneesha Dama, Urvashi,  Aishwarya
Dialogues: Lakshmi Bhoopal
Script Supervision: Gopi Mohan
Editing: Junaid Siddiqui
Cinematography: Richard Prasad
Music: Mickey J Meyer
Direction: Nandini Reddy

Rating: 3.5/5

Story Premise: Oh Baby is about a grandmother Savithri, who is fondly called baby. An unhappy soul who resents her life and despises God for being so harsh on her, by fulfilling her desires and giving her such a troublesome life. So, one day, in a mysterious way God gives her a second chance to go back to her youth to enjoy her life. That ensues a humorous and emotional journey of a granny. A granny's life, back into her twenties is worthy watch on big screen.

Story: It is a new kind of subject dealt in Telugu Cinema.  The story of Oh Baby is a meaningful conceptual fantasy story wrapped with humour that touches the heartstrings, that could make us value our elders.

Screenplay: Oh Baby moves like a cool breeze making us forget about the time and length until it has to deal with the emotional part of the story. This portion seems a bit exhaustive and preachy but finally it is covered up with a fine conclusion that gives us sense of good feeling while coming out of the theatre.
      In one of the sequence, the troubles of baby when she was young, is revealed beautifully in a song. It stands out as a highlight episode of the whole film. Just loved the portion. It is so heartwarming to see Savithri aka Baby being through so much trouble. And Samantha's act is pure gold. We can't help but empathize (and/or sympathize) on her portrayal of Baby.  Beautifully executed.

Direction: Oh Baby seems to be the kind of subject that perfectly suits Nandini Reddy's style of making. The humorous portions worked out very well. Probably from her point of view, a woman director's point of view, gave a lot of depth to this female centric subject. We could understand and connect to subtlest women troubles and being moved by their unconditional love as a mother, grandmother to name a few. This view of Nandini Reddy, most probably instinctive, turns out to be the biggest strength for the movie.
       The only aspect that's a bit hard to digest is the preachy part (especially for me - a guy who hates films that try to preach explicitly). But, come on, if this is a movie from Nandini Reddy, we must be prepared to expect some preachy dialogues on how to live properly or meaningfully or whatever. But, perhaps, if it is not done on the face through dialogues, it won't look so painful to watch. If it is conveyed through subtext instead through dialogues it could actually look beautiful and perhaps could become a great strength for the whole movie that inherently creates self realisation to the viewer. A big fan of such narratives! Anyways, 'Oh Baby' is easily seems like the finest work of director Nandini Reddy till date. Kudos to her.

Performances: The biggest asset of the movie is undoubtedly Samantha's performance as baby. Most of the times we almost forget that she Samantha, instead she make us believe that it is actually Lakshmi, who played the older baby role. Such is the brilliance in her performance. Lakshmi, the veteran actress is brilliant as usual. We fall in love with their characterizations. We feel as if they are the same person. They remind us of our own grandmothers' or mothers'.

We also witness fine performances from all the lead Rajendra Prasad,  Rao Ramesh,  Naga Shaurya,
 Jagapathi Babu, Teja Sajja, Gayathri, Sunayana, Aneesha Dama, Urvashi,  Aishwarya. The young actress Aneesha Dama (Daughter of Rao Ramesh character) is very impressive, though its a small part, couldn't recognize her potential in her earlier movie "Geetha Govindam" though. The whole ensemble cast looks adorable in this adorable story.

Technical Departments: In technical department music by Mickey J Meyer stands out. His composition of songs along with great lyrical value are an asset to the subject that is dealt in the movie.
      And dialogues, script, production design, art work, editing and cinematography ably supported the subject.

Highlights: 
Samantha's portrayal of baby and her characterization
Earnest and adorable performances from the ensemble cast
Music
An entertaining & adorable Subject

Overall Impact: A clean entertainer that could most enjoyed when watched with the whole family. Kudos to the team.

Rating: 3.5/5


Check the below links for the movie teaser and trailers:

Oh Baby Movie Teaser

Oh Baby Movie Trailer

Thank you for your visit!

Kalki Telugu Movie Review - Intelligent and ambitious but falters in engaging audience

Story premise: Directed by Prashanth Varma, the story takes place in Kolhapur after the independence. The place had been administered by a royal family until one greedy guy called Narsappa, out of his greed for power gets the head of the royal family killed. He then kills his widow wife and her little son, burning the whole palace they are in. That clears all the hurdles for Narsappa to become undisputed king, who had been unanimously ruling the place for years scaring the people with his inhumane acts. In an unexpected shock Narsappa’s brother Shekhar Babu who has a good name among public is burnt alive being tied to a tree. Who has done it? What could be the intention behind his killing? To solve this mystery, inspector Kalki arrives to the village. The rest of the story is about how inspector Kalki goes in his own way in resolving the case.

Performances: All the performances are believable and carries out their part convincingly. Though we can see the efforts, Dr. Rajashekhar put in to play the Kalki part, his age plays a bit of distraction considering the feats he does. Its a bit unconvincing.

Technical Department: The music, cinematography, art work are a big plus to the narrative. Their efforts take the movie to next level, presentation-wise.

Screenplay & Direction: When it comes to this story there is nothing ordinary happens. It needs a greater imagination to create such situations. But then a greater effort has to be put in to make the story look organic. That’s where the film falters. We are thrown this disconnected profound incidents with unanswered questions one after other that we as audience seem to be disoriented from the happenings. We are lost on what we are looking for.

The ending is stunning, that’s probably because the director wants to reveal everything at the end. But cramming all the vital information in the ending has costed him dear as the whole first half looks flat as nothing major seems to be happening except only the questions are raised one after other without even a single one being answered which makes us loose interest in the proceedings.

The efforts put in to create the extraordinary situations, set work and visuals are commendable. The movie looks fired up in all departments except it fails in the basic rule - engaging the audience.

Overall Impact: This movie is very ambitious one made with great efforts from the all the cast and crew. We can’t help but appreciate the amount of efforts that has gone in making this film. But those very efforts became a curse of sorts, made the film look complex and less engaging. A more empathetic characterization of the lead character would have made us root for him till the end, waiting for him to win at the end. It is an intelligent film works in parts in engaging the audience and rest of the time looks indulgent and disorienting.

Plus points:
Story
Direction
Music
Cinematography
Art


Minus points:
Screenplay

Rating: 2.5/5

Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya review - Innovative investigative fun ride thriller

Screenplay by Swaroop RSJ and Naveen Polishetty, and directed by Swaroop RSJ, the story is about a private detective who is passionate in investigating crime, and is looking to make it big in crime investigation. He is smart and intelligent though he looks silly on the outset. While he carry out petty investigations for living, the real challenge for him arises when he stumbles upon a case where a bereaved father is looking for justice for his raped and murdered daughter, which is somehow being ignored by police. But our detective sees something fishy here and suspects that this murder is somehow linked to the unidentified dead bodies that are frequently found at the railway track. Whether and how our detective succeeds in unearthing the secrets behind the happenings forms the rest of the story.

The unpredictable nature of screenplay keeps us hooked till the end. The maze of twists that are worked out to keep the audience guessing, shows the efforts that were put into the writing.
The lead character Naveen’s humorous portrayal of the detective character keeps us entertained throughout, which otherwise could have been a serious story. Naveen’s histrionics are spot on in making us erupt into laughter. He is a talent to look out for in future.

When it comes to the writing, there are certain aspects where the motives of police to help the detective in the investigation are not clearly established. Many a times, things look quite easy for our protagonist to tread through.

Though the female lead character did justice to her given role, her character has nothing much to do except to blindly follow our detective in his investigation. A proper reasoning is missing as to why she ended up working as an assistant to out detective. Why would she risk her life in such lethal crime investigations. Though it could be some kind of cinematic liberty a simple reasoning for her being there could have added lot of depth to her character.

The director has succeeded in extracting believable performances from all the actors. Though a debutant in direction, and given the subject is not a run of the mill one, the director has pulled it off with aplomb, considering the difficulty in convincingly getting the story from paper to the screen. The director has succeeded with flying colours.

The background music by Mark K Robin is pretty good. It takes the edgy episodes in the film to another level. The cinematography by Sunny Kurapati ably supports the thriller narrative. As in one of the scenes the protagonist explains that the dull moody lighting helps him think more deeply in investigation, the moodily lit cinematography keeps us engrossed in the subject and helps in making this an engaging ride.

Finally, it has been a while we witnessed such a subject in Telugu. Its refreshing. If you can get along with the proceedings keeping this knit picking brain aside from trying to find the ignorable mistakes, you can actually enjoy this comedy laced investigation thriller that is racy, funny and engaging and that has its heart in place.

Rating: 3.25/5