A film on friendship with nice twist

Parasuram, a protégé of Puri Jagannath, got a promotion as director with Yuvatha. He prepared a subject with friendship in its backdrop and highlighted the value of friendship. He started the film with a voice over of Puri Jagannath, narrating the greatness of friendship and its value. Though many films have come on the Telugu screen with friendship, this time, the director chose a typical movement in the subject with a gripping suspense all through the film.

Veerababu @ Babu (Nikhil) leaves his house in a remote village after having a quarrel with his uncle and aunt, who brought him up. He decides to stay with his friends Ajay, who was a software engineer planning to go to the US, Subbu, an assistant director with plans to bring out a film with big hero like Pawan Kalyan, Kiran, who had an ambition to become a police officer but settles as a security guard. All these friends stay in Hyderabad and Babu joins them. Babu had an accidental friendship with Baby (Aksha) and they soon fall in love with each other. Once the friends celebrate Baby's birthday and Babu thrashes a goon for teasing Baby. Boring grudge, that goon attacks Babu on some other day and in the melee, Subbu gets grievous injury on head and the doctors demand Rs 5 lakh to get him operated. All the friends try their best to secure that money but they could not pool it up. This forces them to take a hand loan from a local don called Laddu, with a promise to return it in a week. However, they could not get back the money. When Laddu threatens them that he would kill all the friends, Babu decides to do something and Kiran suggests robbing an agency which fills money in ATM centres. By the time Babu and Ajay go to the place, he finds some one already robbed it, but get fixed in a trap by the police. They get jailed. Babu and Ajay suspect Kiran was behind the robbery as he disappears. Somehow they come out only to find out that Kiran was lying on the bed. Why Kiran was on bed? What happened to Subbu? Who really robbed the Agency and fixed Babu and Ajay in the case? What happened to the love between Babu and Baby? Answers to all these questions form part of the climax.

PERFORMANCE:

Nikhil improved a lot in this film. Though he was one among a group of heroes in 'Happy Days' he proved his identity. Next, he got an opportunity to play a hero with a group of friends in 'Ankith, Pallavi and Friends'. However, he could not leave a mark among the audiences with that film. But this time, he appeared quite energetic all through the film. He showed very good ease in showing all kinds of emotions, including action, dance sequences, love and romantic scenes. He is the lone artiste who carried the entire responsibility in moving the film at a steady pace. Debutant heroine Aksha turned an okay girl but not very impressive. She had some similarities of Preity Zinta and Amisha Patel in some scenes and angles. She had very little scope for performance. However, she played well in romantic scenes. Other artistes who played friends to him did their best. The presence of senior character artistes like Jayaprakash Reddy, Sayaji Shinde, Narsing Yadav, Jeeva, Pruthvi and Sivanarayana is just okay and they were made good use to evoke comedy by the director.

TECHNICAL:

Director Parasuram himself penned the story, dialogues for the film and some of the dialogues evoked good applause from the audiences. The one-liner dialogues on friendship, making other happy gelled well with the audiences. Music by Manisharma is another asset for the film. All the songs were tuned well and a couple of songs are foot-tapping too. Lyrics by Krishna Chaitanya are just okay. Camera by Jaswant is okay, while Marthand K Venkatesh should have tightened the film as some of the scenes turned nagging. The director penned a very good screenplay in the first half. Though he lost grip on the story some 20 minutes before the interval bang, picked up suitably just before the break. Again the story went on dragging and nagging for about 40 minutes after intermission. Again it picked up the speed. The climax was wrapped in a hurried manner giving scope for little logic.

REMARKS:

The director's immaturity could be seen in many of the scenes. The notable lapse on the part of the director is that he failed to establish the love between the hero and heroine properly. It is absurd to note that an agency which fills the currency in ATMs would be manned by a single security guard? It is also improper to say that criminals who were arrested in such a big robbery worth Rs 2 crore could be brought out so easily. However, he maintained good suspense all through the film. Nobody could guess the real culprit till last minute and the twist maintained till climax. As a whole the film is okay and Parasuram proved a competent director. Even Nikhil's performance reminds the audiences of Raviteja.

Cast: Nikhil, Aksha, Jeeva, Karuna, Sayaji Shinde, Jayaprakash Reddy, Srinivasa Reddy, Ranadhir, Subhash, Narasimha, Pruthvi, and others

Credits: Music – Manisharma, Lyrics – Krishna Chaitanya, Cinematography – T Jaswant, Editing – Marthand K Venkatesh, Additional screenplay – Chaitanya Dantuluri, Producers – Hari and Uma Prakash, Story, dialogues, screenplay and direction – Parasuram

Banner: Worth Watching Entertainments

Released on: November 7, 2008

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