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A mere paper tiger
Highlights
The animal, Tiger, for one, holds a great fascination among southern film producers who somehow find a way to use it as a film’s title, either in the native language or its multi-lingual forms. In October itself, there have been two tiger films released with one more, ‘Bengal Tiger’ to follow soon.
The animal, Tiger, for one, holds a great fascination among southern film producers who somehow find a way to use it as a film’s title, either in the native language or its multi-lingual forms. In October itself, there have been two tiger films released with one more, ‘Bengal Tiger’ to follow soon. The first one was the mega dud ‘Puli’ and now it is the second with a Hindi variant – ‘Sher’- which has Nandamuri Kalyanram and Sonal Chauhan in the lead roles.
Adamantly refusing to move an inch from the beaten-to-death, predictable Telugu commercial film formula, director Mallikarjun, erstwhile assistant to Puri Jagannadh, tries in vain to breathe life into a flat script and stereotyped sequences. His hero, Gautam, essayed by Kalyan, has an undefined identity, typical of modern Telugu film heroes, who can do anything anytime and get away with it. Imagine suggesting to a top cop in the film that he would take over the encounter of the bad elements if he permits him! The logic being, that way he would take his revenge and enable the police officer get a DGP rank! This is just one sample.
Meandering through uninteresting run-up of events which has forced comedy of Brahmanandam, Ali and a gang of small-time regulars seen in every second Telugu film, ‘Sher’, limps along. A terribly haggard-looking Sonal Chauhan brings to life the character of an irritatingly dumb heroine, who can do only unimaginably stupid things and be a mere eye candy, which continues in this film too.
For starters, the film, thankfully just over two hours long, tries to build up a cop-versus- underworld kind of a story in its initial frames which somehow gets lost as the hero’s personal vendetta takes centrestage later. Unfortunately, Kalyan does not have the aura of his more successful counterparts. Hence he has had to work harder to make the film click and though he tries to do so, the weak story and poor characterisation of the villain gang fails to provide the zing to the action sequences. The repeated references to the big daddy NTR and Balayya babai seem more of a desperate measure to keep the family fans happy, which may not work in the film’s favour as expected.
‘Pataas’, the earlier release of the hero, surprised everyone with its success at the turnstile. As far as this release goes for Kalyanram, who has had a dozen films in as many years, dreaming of riding into the horizon of success on this Sher’s back may end up being a nightmare, after all!
Sher
Cast : Kalyanram and Sonal Chauhan
Direction : Mallikarjun
Genre : Action-drama
Like : Sonal Chauhan and running time
Dislike : Clichéd script and execution
Rating : 1.1/2
By K Naresh Kumar
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