Who's good and who's bad? A Character review of Attarintiki Daaredi
Attarintiki Daredi has survived the worst scare the movie world has ever seen but still managed to top the all-time collection charts. Although the pre-release leak would've affected the full-run collections by 10-15 crores, the losses were mitigated by Pawan's mere presence on the silver screen. But not everyone agree that Pawan was the sole responsible entity who steered this sinking ship to safe shores. Lets see who are responsible and who are not.
Trivikram Srinivas is the director who gave Pawan a much needed hit when Pawan's career was at cross-roads. Their earlier venture Jalsa was the highest grosser in Pawan's career until Pawan gave a full-fledged hit with Gabbar Singh in 2012. Trivi is not only known for his witty one-liners but also known to attract family audiences with his emotional & thought-provoking episodes.
In #AD, he has done the same but a little less when compared to his previous movies. Trivikram now needs to re-think about his over usage of rhymes and one-liners as there is a huge risk of those dialogues getting monotonous. A classic example is the first such dialogue in the film - "Simham padukundi kada ani joolutho jada veyakudadu". He could've stopped with that, but he followed it up with "Puli palakarinchindi kada ani pakkana nilabadi photo digakudadu", which is redundant. There are a couple of other dialogues which were used out of context and could've been avoided. One could already sense some rhyme is about to unleash when the characters utter half the dialogue. Trivi needs to control these so that the audience are not over dosed and bored. Otherwise, he has done his job well.
Boman Irani might be a new man for B & C centre audience, but he is a well-known for A-centre movie lovers from the days of Munna Bhai MBBS. Many expected him to be the main villian of the story, but he is the central character because of whom the whole story evolved. Although his strengths were not fully utilized, he did enough to create an impact.
Nadia is the title bearer of the movie. This neither-old-nor-young lady is the best selection Trivikram has made for the movie. She was apt in the roles of mother, mother-in-law, daughter and a business woman. She gets full marks for her acting.
Although Samantha is the lead female actor, Pranitha won the hearts of many. These two fit in well to engage the young audience. Both these ladies got significant roles unlike films in which heroines just appear for dance and romance.
Mukesh Rishi had done a few father roles in his earlier movies but he never acted as a son of a man who is almost the same age as his. The Mukesh and Irani duo looked like brothers than father & son. Mukesh was just OK.
Rao Ramesh was exceptional and is fast replacing Prakash Raj in TFI. His dialogue explaining heart attack could only have been done by him with such naturality.
Posani was good. Kota's potentials were not fully utilized although he was good in the context of the story. The rest of Mother-in-law's family were there to fill the break-fast seats at Boman Irani's bungalow.
Ali entered as male nurse but never treated the ailing patient. He had a relatively long screen presence and was good although not great. Raghu Babu was OK. MS Narayana was apt in his half-suit secretary role.
Brahmanandam entered late into the scene but Trivikram utilized him to the core. The "Bhaskar Awards", "Attapur Baba" and "Ahalya Amayakuralu" episodes are the main treats which make the audiences bump out of their seats. Srinivasa Reddy was typecast as Brahmanandam's assistant and he got a couple of good scenes. The way he utters the dialogue "How dare you show your back to me, Slave. Remove your helmet and tell your name to me" shows the lack of quality of "Radiator", and he deserves better applause than Brahmanandam in that scene.
The Gabbar Singh antyakshari batch made a brief appearance and brought in a few laughs.
Absolutely no idea of who does what behind the scenes. No comments.
One wonders whether DSP deliberately stores his best for Powerstar. His albums Jalsa and Gabbar Singh can be attributed major part of success to those movies, and he has done it again.
Power Star Pawan kalyan seems to have some kind of love for villians. The villian's name in Kushi is Gudumba Satti, and he named himself Gudumba Shankar in the past. He transformed Venkataratnam Naidu to Gabbar Singh, the worst feared villian in Indian Cinema. Now, he has lifted Prakash Raj's name in Badri and named himself Gautham Nanda.
Coming to his performance in AD, with no hesitation one can say that he is the heart and the soul of the movie. His comedy timing and body language are simply those which the audience expect of him. Although his trademark mannerism of hand-on-neck was much less used in this movie, he compensated it with his other mannerisms. The funny imitation of ladies, like wearing half-saree, running from behind the tree when kissed by Samantha are some of Pawan's trademarks.
The climax is one of the much talked about episodes in AD. Pawan has done a decent job but still is not the best in doing emotional scenes. He failed to penetrate into audiences hearts just like Venkatesh does in his films (in Raja for example), or his brother Chiranjeevi did(in Daddy for example). Pawan still has a scope for improvement in the emotion space. However, people don't expect much of emotion or dances from Pawan's movies which is a plus point in his perspective.
Overall, just like any other movie, AD is a combined effort of each and every individual who worked for the movie. I wish AD stays at the top for a while like Magadheera did before the inevitable takeover of top position pushes it to next place, hopefully by his own movie again.