A loving brother who raised other orphans like him as his blood brothers, ends up with commitment phobia as he thinks marriage means the end of a happy united family. This thought process of his looked jaded and too old fashioned but intrigued me to follow his life. Under no circumstances I was convinced that he truly hated women like he was portraying outside and felt really happy when he found a girl, who believes in non-violence. But somehow the story and narration did not convince to get such a high that I should enjoyed watching certain exciting parts of his story!
PLOT : Violently vigilant village head of Thallapaka, Rayalaseema village, Katamarayudu (Pawan Kalyan) with his loving brothers, Konda (Ajay), Janardhan (Siva Balaji), Kamal Kamaraju and Chaitanya Krishna fights for the rights of people of the village. He has a lawyer friend Linga Babu (Ali) who takes care of legal issues. The problem with Rayudu is he likes to remain single throughout his life while his friend and brothers are inclined to get married to their love interests. They decide to change the thinking of Rayudu by introducing him to Avantika (Sruthi Hassan), a classical dancer. But she believes in non-violence and her family too show aversion to any form of violent behaviour. Were they successful? If they were what all difficulties they had to face forms the rest of the story!
Performances : Pawan Kalyan looked at his best with an energetic performance on screen. After sometime, he shook his leg in the songs and Jivvu Jivvu , song will remain a fan favourite for atleast few years. He looked aged at times and that was in sync with the character he was playing. His screen presence and charisma were unmatchable and they remain so. His performance as Katamarayudu will be remembered by his fans for sure.
Sruthi Hassan overacts in every scene and her energy levels appear to have taken a dip in the movie. She is getting highly predictable with her expressions and she looked completely out of shape in the movie. In song sequences, her costumes can be rated as the worst in at least five years.
Ali and Prudhvi succeeded in evoking some laughs. Rao Ramesh even though gets on your nerve at times, does provide a healthy amount of laughter two scenes. Rest of the actors including Siva Balaji, Pavitra Lokesh, Nasser, Ajay, Chaitanya Krishna and Pradeep Rawat were just present in the movie to fill in the characters. There were neither given a good character nor proper scenes.
Technicalities : Editing by veteran Gautham Raju surprises you with jumbling of shots everywhere. He failed in using the right shot at right scene as well. May be lack of time made him do such a job but this was highly unexpected from him. Cinematography by Prasad Murella too makes you wonder if he was the man behind other big movies that his resume boasts off. His work in the film was highly poor and unsatisfactory too. Few shots have staging issues as well. Music and Back Ground Score by Anup Rubens fail the movie big time. The music director fails to utilise the opportunity given to him and depresses a high octane adrenaline pumping sequence with his remixed score. Songs too feel heard somewhere and except for Jivvu Jivvu nothing stays on your mind too. Even that song lasts due to terrific energy of the lead actor.
Writers Bhupathi Raja, Akula Siva, Vema Reddy, Vasu Verma and Deepak Raj fail to provide any new twist to an age-old story through screenplay. They try to follow the rule book of Telugu masala films but the execution on screen even though its lead perform with energy fail to ignite any reaction other than irritation. They needed to try something fresh but they just could not understand what worked for Veeram’s favour and diluted the impact further.
Kishore Pardasani needed to capture the magic of Pawan Kalyan on screen like Trivikram does but he just fails to give him good enough character moments. Even in the sequences where he was to true to original he fails to get the same impact. He had a good hero in his hands and a great opportunity to showcase him in a never done before mass role but he failed to utilise him properly. Lacklustre scenes and songs break the flow of the story and fail to make any impression as well.
Analysis : Pawan Kalyan is the heart and soul of yet another film. Any popular crazy hero needs good enough story and screenplay that let them showcase their skills and give their fans a high in the theatre. But Pawan Kalyan yet again falls prey for a lacklustre screenplay and an overtly incompetent director. Had the director understood the main positives of the original and worked on improving on its flaws film would have been one of the enjoyable flicks for everyone. Now, it remains a film that gives few highs for fans and remain an exercise for common audience. Strictly for Pawanists.
Rating : 2/5
