Festive fare

The original festival of Krishnashtami may still be a few months away but actor Sunil and his director Vasu Varma seem to have been early birds in celebrating it. Returning to the silver screen, nearly two years after his last major release, the comedian-turned- ‘golden star’ seems to have hit the bull’s eye this time around. A breezy, easy-on-the eye entertainer, ‘Krishnashtami’ stands out for its treatment and narrative.

For once, despite a readily available comfort zone of Seema faction feuds with a violent love story twist, Vasu Varma, revolves his venture on a different level and tempo, in the process, emerging as a smooth storyteller. After his last film ‘Josh’, he seems to have decided to play to the gallery in his own way, mixing action, comedy and strong family sentiment and raising the bar.

Essaying the role of a young, hep computer game geek in the land of the Big Apple, Sunil yearns for his home and is desperate to return to India. His family, however, quotes an astrologer who says it would be fatal if he steps on the country’s soil. Defying his uncle’s diktat, he being the hero after all, lands in Hyderabad, in the jing bang company of a comedian (Sapthagiri) and a young father (Ajay) with a smart aleck kid.

The chase begins hereafter, with blood-thirsty assassins waiting to finish him right from the time he lands at the airport. The story track becomes familiar too – assumed identities, mistaken relationships and the climax which has to show the villains softening and turning out to be normal human beings.

In a throwback to the films made a decade and more ago, the buffoonery and slapstick comedy which carries the film to the climax (the redoubtable Brahmanandam in a better written role) is the flick’s USP. Comic timing comes naturally to Sunil, having made a great career out of it, and in the company of Posani Krishna Murali, Prithvi and his heroines Nikki Galrani and Dimple Chopade, he unleashes it to great impact.

Of course, keeping abreast of the modern day brand recall techniques, oblique references have been made to power star, with the heroine mouthing insufferable theories titling it ‘Pallavism’. Given that this class of people is only shown as dimwits and love crazy in Telugu cinema, both the girls bare and dare, meeting the front benchers’ expectations. This film, thus, is of a kind, where commercial movie making retains its intrinsic identity, in addition to wanting the audience to feel entertained through and through. In this effort, it surely seems to have worked.

Krishnashtami

Cast : Sunil, Nikki Galrani and Dimple Chopade
Direction : Vasu Varma
Genre : Action-comedy
ThumpsUp : Sunil and the undertone of comedy throughout the film
ThumpsDown : Nothing much
Rating : 3