Viyyalavari Kayyalu - Review

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

After bringing out two successful films like Yevadigola Vadidi and Style, Lagadapati Sridhar chose a typical story, with love, action and faction backdrop to achieve a hattrick. His next film is Viyyalavari Kayyalu. Though he was very careful in selecting the star cast for the story prepared by his film unit, he committed a major mistake in choosing a right director. Sattibabu, who proved himself as a good director of comedy films, failed to run the film with action backdrop coupled with love. But for the slack movement, poor screenplay and absurd direction without adequate links, the film is good to watch because of the performance of Srihari and a couple of action scenes.

Bhupati Rayudu (Srihari) is a big faction leader in Kolimiguntla in Rayalaseema region. His word is a statute for about 16 villages around that area. Vengala Rayudu (Jayaprakash Reddy) is his rival leader. Bhupati has a sister called Nandini (Neha Jhulka), who is studying in the city. Vamsi (Udaykiran) is the son of Pantam Padmanabham (Sayaji Shinde) an honest judge, who resigns to his job to prevent succumbing to political pressure. Vamsi has a sister called Swathi. Once Vamsi saves Nandini from goons, who try to tease her and she loses her heart instantly. She reveals her love to Vamsi without any hesitation. But Vamsi tries to teach her a lesson by making arrangements for marriage. However, Nandini refuses it saying that she wants to get married with the blessings of elders. So Vamsy goes to Kolimiguntla to win the confidence of Bhupati. However, the latter refuses their love. After a dramatic turn of events, Bhupati agrees to their marriage. Now, it was the turn of Vamsi, Bhupati and Nandini to convince Vamsi's father Pantam Padmanabham (Sayaji Shinde) for their marriage. Padmanabham is a principled man, who has resigned to the judge post to avoid succumbing to political pressures and to live honestly. He wants to get a girl, who comes from a good family. He refuses to accept Nandini as his daughter-in-law, because Bhupati is a faction leader and reportedly killed several of his rivals. At this juncture, Padmanabham's daughter and Vamsi's sister Swathi gets kidnapped by one of the criminals, whom Padmanabham sentenced to jail for five years. Bhupati saves Swati and brings her back home. This helps Bhupati to win the hearts of all the family members except Padmanabham. However, Padmanabham agrees for alliance on a condition that Bhupati should win by-elections without bloodshed. However, on nomination day itself, there is a lot of bloodshed and in order to save the lives of people, Bhupati teaches rivals a lesson. At the same time, he goes straight to Vengala Rayudu, saying that he was withdrawing from contest as the bloodshed has become necessary because of rivalry. Padmanabham comes to know the big heart of Bhupati and the film ends on a happy note.

PLUS: major plus point of the film is the performance of Srihari. He really lived in the character. It was Srihari, who took the complete responsibility of keeping the film on hit track. The action episodes could also be said as a highlight of the movie. Though the film is said to be the launch pad for re-entry of Udaykiran to start his second innings, he had not much role to play. Neha Jhulka is also okay in parts. Others did justice to their roles.

MINUS: The one and only minus point is the slackness in the run of the story. The director failed to run the story in an effective manner as many scenes had lost links to earlier scenes. However, it is Marthand K Venkatesh, who edited the copy tried to do justice to a major extent and one had to thank him at least for giving a shape to the film. Director Sattibabu has a good grip over the comedy but he could not effectively run the action drama.

REMARKS: The first half of the film was totally devoted to the love track and the director failed to establish how a girl could fall in love with a boy whom she doesn't know. Moreover, the film appeared to be a direct attack on the Mega Star's family problem, though it is really unintentional. Some of the dialogues in the film hints at Srija's elope with Sirish, though it was a mere coincidence. Ramana Gogula's music is good to listen to certain extent but their choreography is absolutely poor. Moreover, the re-recording is also not apt. But for the action scenes and Srihari's performance, there is nothing much to talk about the film.

Cast: Udaykiran, Neha Jhulka, Srihari, Sayaji Shinde, Jayaprakash Reddy, Giribabu, Ahuti Prasad, Venumadhav, Raghubabu, Jeeva, Krishna Bhagawan, Lakshmipati, GV, Narsing Yadav, LB Sriram, MS Narayana, Brahmaji, Babloo, Suman Shetty, Sivaji Raja, Kavitha, Kausalya, Telangana Sakuntala, Apoorva, Geeta Singh, Satya Krishnan and others.

Credits: Story – Larsco Entertainments' unit, Dialogues – Sainath, Camera – Ajayan Vincent, Editing – Marthand K Venkatesh, Action – Ram-Lakshman, Music – Ramana Gogula, Art – Ashok, Presents – Ramalakshmi Cine Creations, Producer – Lagadapati Sirisha Sridhar, Screenplay and direction – Kota Satyanarayana E (Sattibabu).

Banner: Larsco Entertainment

Released on: November 1, 2007