Majnu Movie Review: A predictable, love sick tale

Cast : Nani, Anu Emmanuel and Priya Shri
Direction : Virinchi Varma
Genre : Romance
Plus points : Nani who puts up an earnest effort
Minus points : Lazy, disjointed treatment

Wastrel boy (Nani) sees touch-me-not girl (Priya Shri) in Hyderabad and flips for her, despite she being his friend’s choice. Overplaying his Casanova approach and managing to win over her, the assistant director- turned- romeo turns nostalgic and lays bare his jilted love tale to her—that he had a girlfriend (Anu Emmanuel) with whom he was keen on settling down with, but it was not to be. This portion of the film takes place in Bhimavaram, captured well on camera with its scenic beauty and greenery.

The tender-hearted city woman is all empathising but obviously Telugu cinema cannot do with merely this much melodrama alone. The small town woman too surfaces in Hyderabad, as a family member of his new love, giving the film the much-needed interval bang. What follows forms the second half.

‘Natural Star’ Nani, riding high on the back of a string of hits, plays the pinch hitter in a hopeless situation to salvage a rank mediocre script and inconsistent humour component. Director Virinchi Varma does not trouble the leading ladies too much and his story does not bother to test their histrionic abilities, confining them to being weepy, clinging types, which the local crowd is comfortable with. In fact, the first half is a tiresome, sluggish effort with scenes strung together only to make the crowd wait for the second half.

Varma stops short of reducing it to a ‘60s tearjerker, introducing characters at will and proceeding towards the climax, empowered by a cameo appearance of the latest teeny bopper Raj Tarun who plays according to the assigned role. In any case, this genre is the most repeated and over exposed across Indian cinema, with a sure shot happy ending, which is what happens here too, with the heroine’s ‘masculine’ act of driving a Royal Enfield to chase down her man and make him accept her! One wishes the same time could have been devoted to rework the scatter brained approach to making this film and remix it better, even if it ultimately turns out to be a romcom potboiler! This ‘Majnu,’ hence, surely deserves to be given a royal ignore!

BY K Naresh Kumar