D Nagarjuna
If you ask what is saving India, one can say with guarantee that fun- and fun-loving people are rescuing this country. Now come down to Telugu-speaking states and who doesn’t know Brahmanandam just as no one doesn’t know Amitabh Bachchan at the national level?
It was the sheer name of Brahmanandam which turned out to be the title of a movie that drove this writer to the theatre to grab the opportunity of what the former wants to convey here. The very title on the poster is creative and tricky. Perhaps, Brahmanandam wants the viewers to split the title into Brahma and Anandam without changing the spelling. The credit for that goes to the lettering artist who creates and depicts ma and aa from the same ‘votthu’.
So, watch this movie as Brahma and Anandam and this subtlety is ignored by all his fans who can see none other than Brahmanandam. The fact that this movie was given a 100-seater theatre tells the predictability of the distributor that commercially this may be a flop. So, diehard fans of the comedian may watch this movie and the rest would watch on OTT where it may be a hit. The tragedy with comedians is that people love the comedy part more than the comedians themselves though Brahmanandam doesn’t come under that bracket. He is an exception.
Now, coming to the movie, it looks like the father is giving one more chance for the son to prove his mettle which he tried his best and proved better than his earlier experiments. There is serious sarcasm in the movie which may boomerang but right-thinking people may not really find fault with the concept of the story which revolves around two aged inmates getting closer in an old age home to fight the biggest challenge any surviving senior citizen faces – loneliness. Brahmanandam, an actor who generates feel-good hormones through comedy seems to say through this movie that one fine day he would be in the shoes of the character he depicted in this movie. Here, the comedian is serious, and subtle but leaves all the humour part of the movie to Vennela Kishore more than to his son. Vennela Kishore ends up as the recovery agent of the collections for this movie through the popularity of Brahmanandam.
The movie is clean sans songs but turns nostalgic to see Talluri Rameshwari, the age-old actress of yesteryears. Vennela’s comedy runs riot.
The irony shown in this movie is that single senior citizens can easily find their partners while the aging youth are struggling to live a married life if not a live-in life. Many are ending up as spinsters and bachelors for various reasons not deciphered by their parents or grandones. The new dimension is same-sex partners. The locales are good and drones have been exploited to show the movie somewhat like in Fida movie. It can easily deserve 3/5 though some may be stingy with 2/3 or even less than that rating.
