Maharshi

25th movie of any actor is a major landmark these days as the actors are doing lesser number of films. When it comes to a star like Mahesh Babu who acts one film per year, then 25th is a huge landmark than anything else. So, as Maharshi is such a big film, it is important for his fans and the actor to make it memorable. Is it? Let’s discuss …

Plot: Ravi (Allari Naresh), Pooja (Pooja Hegde) and K. Rishi Kumar (Mahesh Babu) become friends when they are studying M.Tech and Rishi is driven by the ambition to rule the world. But the other two fail to understand his real human character that is shadowed by his ambition.

He becomes the youngest billionaire and feels like he did not achieve real success as he is lonely at the top. He realizes that he needs those people back in his life and starts a journey to find them. Will he be successful in solving their problems with him and their own personal issues that also involve issues of people? Watch the movie to know more …

Performances: Mahesh Babu has a problem of repeating similar kind of roles after he attains a success and he limits himself to those boundaries more often than not. There is no second thought in him being the best of performers in India but he isn’t giving himself characters that will really help him shine. This character could have been one of his best had the script did not seem it look clueless after a point.

Pooja Hegde did a cameo and looked good in it. Allari Naresh should have been given a good character but he is underused and even criminally wasted for most of the film.

Others including Rao Ramesh, Nasser, Prakash Raj, Vennela Kishore, Meenaxi Dixit, Jayasudha are wasted completely.

Technicalities: Praveen KL could have edited the movie with a better rhythm. It just seemed like he got overwhelmed by the job he is asked to do and did not give the film any real sense of pacing.

KU Mohanan as a cinematographer added value to the scenes with his camera work but couldn’t give a character to the entire film as it seemed a real mess, with no purpose. VFX is bad too.

Devi Sri Prasad is the biggest minus of this movie. He seemed too over confident in composing music of the album and his BGM is too loud and bad.

Hari, Solomon did not write the film but they just tried to use all the positive scenes of old movies and stitched something together without any regard to characters or story.

Vamshi Paidipally went back to his roots after showing a promise that he can grow beyond formula cinema in Oopiri. He just regressed to making a film out of ten films and nothing worked for him. In Brundhavanam, he could come up with comedy but here he did not even have such easy way out. This movie is his laziest work till date.

Analysis: The greatest compliment for any film would be that it is original and refreshing. But when it comes to Telugu films if a movie can make us remember different films then we take it as a compliment and we got used to filling our movies with items that don’t really add any value to story. Maharshi is a glorified example of how much we got used to that formula.

Vamshi Paidipally never showed any great understanding for cinema language or concern for story in his previous films except for Oopiri. That movie seems to be a rare one which got made right accidentally than by plan and structure. Vamshi just showed that he still believes in Brundhavanam formula even after seeing what kind of respect a film like Oopiri can earn him.

Rating: 2.5/5