Aadu Magaadra, nothing more

Come Friday, a new star is born or the dreams go crashing. Come Friday, expectations go amuck and every abetment at art gets a set of unsuspicious viewers who satiate their curiosity out of sheer habit, hope or lack of alternative. It is also worth watching from the sidelines how stardom grows.

Was watching the film in a local theatre alongside Sudheer Babu and his irritant hangers on. Eager as the wannabe star may be of his tryst with stardom, with hangers on of the variety he displayed, the journey may well take longer than even the film suggests. Just as the hangers on assess the fans as a nuisance and behave as bouncers, the filmmaker considers the audience to be imbecile and his script tries to play bouncer!! Film craft has shifted from placing an actor into a tale to creating a script for a star.

Star sons came to be the first beneficiaries of this inverted telescope viewing of the stars. Obviously the next were those who have a nexus to affordable purse strings. The film deals with the latter. There is nothing new to the story or for that matter with the treatment. It is about campus romance between the prime players: Siddhu (Sudheer Babu) and Indu (Asmita Sood) and also her brother Cherry (Randhir) and his fiancée (Poonam Kaur).

The latter has a blood crazy maniacal maternal uncle Shankar Anna ( Ajay) who will kill for anything and everything. There is Prasad (Naresh) who is Siddhu’s dad who rues the birth of his useless son who is always getting him to trouble. While to add comic relief you have Prithvi as part of Shankar Anna’s gang. We have Suman Shetty as part of Siddhu’s gang. We also have Chanti as part of the Shankar gang.

Making brief appearances are: Krishna Bhagwan (efficient as usual), Suman (playing a politician in starched attire). The star of the film is a dog on the run whose services are used ala ‘Vicky Donor’. The conversations of the dog make for the most hilarious moments of the film.

The story moves on expected lines: First the hate then the love between the lead pairs; the villain throwing attitude and people at all; needless violence and hangers on (like the star seems to cultivate in real life too!!); the hero surreptitiously entering the enemy camp, winning his confidence and then being caught, surrounded, beaten up and finally his brawl brain combo coming good.

With nothing refreshing in the tale or its treatment, the audience looks for the support systems to come good. The cast does not deliver. None among the female cast call for any positive mention. Veteran Naresh is his usual confident self and gives the film some genuine moments.

So does Ajay as the villain - time for him to move out of the secondary roles and take the task of the bad guy on his own. Sudheer Babu has obviously spent enough time at the gym. Now he could graduate to an acting school. That acting is not action is a theory he will soon realise. Till then, the audience can at best say: Aadu Magaadra and nothing more.