Anthariksham is the first Space movie from Telugu cinema and it tries to stretch the imagination of young filmmakers from Telugu to new heights. Can it really do so?
Plot: When an indigenous Satellite goes rogue a brilliant team has to assemble and fix it. But they need a brilliant coder Dev (Varun Tej) who knows how to fix the old satellite to join them by hook or crook.
Performances: Varun Tej as an actor is not matured enough to handle a character that needs to work on charm but not on ideals. As the guy comes off as a stubborn and manipulative person, he needs to be charming to get so much attention that this story gives to him. But he couldn’t give it that.
Aditi Rao Hydari is written as Radha to Varun’s Krishna waiting for him for her redemption. That aspect to her character makes it too weak.
Lavanya Tripathi, Rahman, Avasarala Srinivas and Satya Dev try to impress hard. Others are there to fill the gaps.
Technicalities: Gnanasekhar’s visuals lack the finese that a space movie requires. He couldn’t work in coordination with the VFX department. He failed in delivering a compelling image within the budget.
Prashanth Vihari scored the BGM with Hans Zimmer in his mind and we can hear it clearly. Had he tried something original, the movie would have benefitted for sure.
Karthika Srinivas as an editor seems to be happy to follow the script than give something of his own. He should have advised the director on how things are stretching pointlessly.
Sankalp Reddy as a writer seems to have an idea that works as a fun film. But he doesn’t really know how to make it into a script that entertains all. He tried to mix it with patriotism but Space is never a patriotic element that belongs to one Nation. Even Hollywood learnt it and the young filmmaker just ignored it.
In his attempt to make a stubborn short-sighted character a hero, he brought in the patriotic angle and redemption for the mistakes as plot points. Then added sub-plots of secondary characters that just stretch the runtime than really have an effect in story-telling. He is confused totally and over-ambitious to the core. That aspect killed the movie.
Analysis: When an indigenous Satellite goes rogue a brilliant team has to assemble and fix it. But they need a brilliant coder who knows how to fix the old satellite to join them by hook or crook. No, we did not start writing review again but when you look at the story at a glance, we can find many possibilities with such a line.
But the young director couldn’t really come up with a logical film that doesn’t try to stretch beyond limit. The threshold of believability and connectivity are taken for granted to such level that we fail fathom what really went wrong with such a simple premise. Well, the answer is simple, over ambition to mix everything. That makes the movie a boring and eye-soring stretch.
Rating: 2/5
