'Rainbow' Review: Beaten Story And Obsolete Narration

  Film: Rainbow Rating: 2/5 Cast: Rahul, Sonali Chouhan, Dharmavarapu, Prakash Raj, Paruchuri Venkateshwara Rao, SS Rajamouli, Sindhu Menon, Samudra, Kodi Rama Krishna, Deekshit etc Editing: MR Varma Camera: Santhosh Srinivas Music: Nihal Screenplay, Direction: VN Aditya Released On: 2nd October 2008 Story: Shyam aka Shyamala Rao (Rahul) is a professional hoarding painter of a painting company. Swapna (Sonali Chouhan) is an aspiring actress. Shyam likes Swapna and he helps her lot to achieve her dream. When a producer attempts to molest Swapna, Shyam fights with him and gets injured. In later diagnosis it will be known that Shyam got affected by color blindness due to that injury. Hence he becomes unable to see any color except white and black. And Shyam, being an orphan, lives in the house of Kamala (Sindhu Menon), who is dumb by birth. She loves Shyam. Finally how this triangle love story ends? Who marries whom? That forms the rest of the story. Performances: Rahul did a completely different role from that of 'Happy Days'. He needs to work hard on expressions and body language. Sonali Chouhan is ok with respect to face value but as per physique she is looking like a patient with zero-voluptuousness. Sindhu Menon looked well on screen. Prakash Raj's presence didn't elevate the range of the movie due to poor background score and energy-less character. Theatre Deekshit appeared with real life name. Same is the case with SS Rajamouli who acted as a professional actor in real life role for quite long time. Coming to technical departments the only saving grace in the film is cinematography, music and lyrics. Editing is average and direction is poor. Direction also suffered some ups and downs. Direction Mistake: The first producer who gives an opportunity to the heroine asks her to come to 'Touch' Pub. But she comes to 'Bottles and Chimneys' and the entire scene was shot there. VN Aditya didn't bother about the B & C that appeared prominently on the door heroine opens to come in.

Chintakayala Ravi Review

  Cast: Venkatesh, Anushka, Mamata Mohandas, NT Rama Rao (special appearance), Venu Thottempudi (guest appearance), Chandramohan, Sayaji Shinde, Pradeep Shakti, Sunil, Brahmanandam, Ali, Ajay, MS Narayana, Ganesh, Venumadhav, Raghubabu, Srinivasa Reddy, Lakshmi, Arthi Chabria and others Music: Vishal-Sekhar Lyrics: Chandrabose Camera: K. Ravindrababu Editing: Srikar Prasad Presents: Bhavya Producer: Nallamalupu Srinivas (Bujji) Story, Dialogues, additional screenplay: Kona Venkat Screenplay & Direction: Yogesh. Banner: Sri Lakshmi Narasimha Productions Date of Theatrical Release: October 2, 2008 NonstopCinema Rating : 3/5 Venkatesh-type comedy with a touch of sentiment Chintakayala Ravi (Venkatesh) is a mother’s pet. In order to please his mother Seshumamba (Lakshmi), he doesn’t mind to do anything. He manages marks in education, and goes to the US to undertake a course in software there. Though he did not work in any software company, he pretends to be working as software engineer and his mother continues to believe it and tells everyone in the village that her son is a software engineer in the US. However, Ravi struggles hard to survive in the US by working as the head bartender in Cyber Wave, a bar and restaurant, where software engineers generally frequent. Seshu finds an alliance to Ravi in Mamidikayala Lavanya @ Love (Mamata Mohandas). The girl, who has a fascination of moving in luxurious cars in the lavish streets of the US agrees to the alliance. Love contacts her friend Sunita in the US to enquire about Ravi. The accidental introduction between Ravi and Sunita make the latter believe that Ravi is a womaniser. Later, Sunita finds that Ravi is working as a bartender and informs the same to Love. This spoils the entire alliance process. Ravi’s father (Chandramohan) gets a slap by Love’s father Bhupati (Sayaji Shinde) for allegedly cheating them. Ravi learns that it all happened due to Sunita and decides to take revenge against her. He spoils her alliance in the US too, which results in the hospitalisation of Sunita’s father (Chalapati Rao). However, Ravi’s friend also admits in the same hospital after an accident and Sunita learns how big gentleman Ravi is. A doctor working in the hospital reveals that Ravi sacrificed his career to save the life of a person, whom he met immediately after his landing in the US. This makes Sunita realise her folly and get her closer to Ravi. Their friendship turns love. At this juncture, Ravi’s friends contact the person (Venu Thottempudi) whose life was saved by Ravi and make him explain everything to Love’s father in India. As the clouds fade away, the sky turns clear and Bhupati sends his brother and Ravi’s father to the US to bring Ravi for marriage. What happened to the love between Sunita and Ravi? Did Seshu come to know that her son is not working as software engineer? What was her reaction? What about Lavanya? Did she agree to sacrifice her prospective groom to her friend? Answers to all these questions form part of the climax. It was Venkatesh all the way in the entire film. The film could not be thought without Venkatesh.  He not only gave a tremendous performance in the flick with excellent and perfect comedy timing, but also impressed the family audiences with his superb performance in the second half, especially in sentimental scenes. Though most of the songs are not very impressive, a couple of tunes were catchy and foot tapping. It is worth mentioning here that Venkatesh would always in the forefront to shed his image and ready to live in a particular character. The audiences could find the same in this film too by presenting himself as a bartender. Another speciality is that Anushka was so far used by the directors as a glamour doll, who used to move around the heroes as a romantic and chivalrous girl. This time, she got a lot of scope for performance and she proved herself that she too could perform given a chance. Mamata Mohandas’ role was restricted to dance with the hero in a couple of duets in the first half. Other senior artistes including Chandramohan, Sayaji Shinde did justice to their roles, while Lakshmi reproduced the same old senimental mother’s role of ‘Murari’ in this film again. Though the number of comedians is heavy, which include, Brahmanandam, Venumadhav, Srinivasa Reddy, Dharmavarapu Subrahmanyam and others, none of them could bring smile on the face of audiences. Ali also played the same old ‘Nachimi’ character of Chiruta fame in this film too. Sunil tried to play a novel role as a comedy villain but failed to live to the expectations. There are three surprises in the film. Venu who appears like a flash in a couple of scenes left a nice impact on the audiences with his role. Ajay, who is emerging as a good villain in Telugu films played a very soft and innocent role in the flick. The last but not the least, NTR joins the party hosted by Ajay in the film and shakes his legs with Venkatesh in a song which goes like ‘Tavva Tavva…’. Kona Venkat scripted the story and dialogues for the flick and it is really a tailor-made subject for Venkatesh. It appears Venkatesh, in order to keep his identity alive and to prevent the damage by giving a flop to his career, is trying to choose safe subjects, instead of going for novel subjects. Besides story and dialogues Kona Venkat also scripted additional screenplay and assisted in running the movie with a good tempo. Chandrabose failed to impress the audiences with his songs and they remained average. Only two or three songs are good to listen and their choreography is also fine to some extent. Vishal-Sekhar duo could not attract the audiences with their tunes. Moreover, the bit song before the climax was almost a lift from their popular film ‘Om Shanti Om’. Background score by Manisharma is okay. Camera work by Ravindrababu is impressive and he was able to capture the lifestyle and beauty of the US well. Editing by Srikara Prasad is adequate. Director Yogesh showed good improvement in performance from his earlier films. However, with has no mass masala scenes or action scenes in the film to attract the mass audiences the movie may not attract mass audiences. The production values of Nallamalupu Bujji are good and the film remind the audiences of Venkatesh’s entertainers like ‘Nuvvu Naaku Nachav’ and ‘Aadavari Maatalaku Ardhale Verule.’ Though the storyline is a routine, the director gave it a novel treatment. Had the director overcome the poor run of screenplay, the film would have been further better.

'Souryam' Review:

  Full Length Mass Entertainer: Film: Souryam Rating: 3/5 Cast: Gopichand, Anushka, Poonam Kour, Manoj Jain, Raghu Babu, Krishna Bhagawan, Dharmavarapu, MS Narayana, Sudha, Tanikella Bharani etc Dialogues: Ratnam Fights: Vijay, Ram-Laxman Art: Vivek Editing: Marthand K Venkatesh Music: Mani Sharma Camera: Vetri Producer: Anand Prasad Story,Screenplay,Direction: Shiva Released On: 25th Sep 2008 The much awaited Gopichand-Anuskka starred 'Souryam' has released today. The film raised the interest graph with two reasons. One is Gopichand's success track and the other is posters of Anushka. Is the film in tune with the expectations? Is it the same sterotype action flick like Gopichand's earlier ones? Let us probe into the details. Story: An action packed treat, the story is on the backdrop of Kolkata in a college which is joined by Vijay (Gopichand). There he catches up with Shwetha (Anushka) and what starts as a casual relation turns into deep romance for Shwetha but Vijay keeps her at bay. Meanwhile, Vijay somehow wants to get close to Divya (Poonam) and helps her in all ways possible. On the other hand, there is the dreaded goon Sivaram Goud (Manoj K Jayan) who is in the jail in Hyderabad but his son (Ajay) and his goons come all the way searching for Divya. What is the reason? Why does Vijay want to get close to Divya? Why is Sivaram searching for Divya? Is Shwetha successful in her love with Vijay? All this forms the rest of the story.   Performances: Gopichand is at his best and proved to be a wonderful actor again. He mastered in enacting the emotional scenes. He also has shown some glitter in dances with a couple of interesting steps. Anushka's screen presence elevated the movie on a whole with glamour. She reduced a lot and that is optimum. But she over-acted in boozing scene and bathroom scene.   Poonam Kaur played a prominent role and she is just ok. Her face is going flabby where she needs to keep a check on that.   New villain Manoj Jain did his best but still the range of Murali Sharma, Pradeep Rawat or Prakash Raj is not seen. Ajay's villainy is also up to the mark.   Ali's comedy as Gymson brought ample laughs. Krishna Bhagawan and Raghu Babu are at their best and the script supported them a lot.   Coming to technical departments, Cinematography is at its best, fight sequences are exhausting and music is average. Shiva's direction has suffered some hiccups and he failed to bring in Kolkata nativity on screen.   High Lights: Ali's 6 pack comedy Krishna Bhagawan's situational dialogue punches Raghu Babu's comedy Gopichand in emotional scenes Anushka's screen presence   Senseless Scenes and Drawbacks: Direction faults (Kolkata background is not projected in dialogues or police uniform. Everybody in Kolkata speaks in Telugu) Why Gopichand joins in college? That is another ridiculous scene Screenplay hiccups (movie appears to be dragging because of this)   Analysis: This is another movie in the lines of Gopichand's earlier films- Yagnam, Ranam etc where action, emotion and violence form the formula.   The movie entertains the mass action film lovers as there is enough comedy packed in right manner. Ali's 6-pack comedy, Krishna Bhagawan-Raghubabu's episode, MS Narayana's guest appearance and situational comedy scenes with lead roles have generated ample humor. Keeping Anushka's trade mark eroticism aside and notable direction faults the other side; the film proves to be an entertainer by all means.   First half of the movie is average while the second half picked up the momentum and raised interest levels. But the climax appears to have dragged due to lengthy screenplay.   On a whole it is a mass entertainer and the success of this flick depends on the patronage of mass audiences.