KHAIDI No. 150 – BOSS (Chiranjeevi) MAKES A DECENT COME BACK

In last one week there is one thing which is ringing in the ears of every Telugu movie buff is that THE BOSS IS BACK.   Sure the Boss made a smooth, effortless and very decent come back bordering rating of `Boss is Back with a Bang’.   

First thing first, though appearing after a long hibernation of Nine years, Chiranjeevi has not shown any rustiness whatsoever and his acting, dances, and even action to a great extent are absolutely fluid as if he did not have any break of single day. 

  

Mahesh Babu

Chiranjeevi took a break at his peak to enter politics. He has blotted and gone out of shape during his political career and his age was evident all over.   In the last nine years the Telugu industry made a great transition.   Gone are the days of hysterical melodramas and mindless action movies. Production values and the budgets have gone up multi fold, almost making it impossible to recover cost if restricted to twin Telugu states of Andhra and Telangana.   Movies like Bahubali have broken to regional barriers and the dubbed versions have made more money at box office than the original.    In the last nine years all the young crop of actors like Mahesh Babu, Pawan Kalyan, Jr. NTR, Allu Arjun, Ram Charan and Prabas have established themselves and ruling the roost in Telugu Industry.  All these guys have taken great care of their looks and they are giving run for the money to their bollywood counterparts.   No one is afraid of experiment with looks, new scripts, new directors and new production houses.  

With this back ground it is not so easy for Chiranjivi, who turned 61, to make a come- back with his mega star status, his future plans and everything at stake.   When Amitabh innings was over as a hero with half a dozen of his movie as hero bombing at box office, he had to take a break for long time and could make a come back in all together new elderly avatar and not as a hero.    With large than life image and unprecedented fan following Rajnikant too is finding it difficult to pull off success.   All his movies after Robo have bombed at boxoffice.    But Chiru preferred to make a come back as a mass hero only and to his credit he surprised everyone including himself.   

Director VV Vinayak

He chose a safe bet for his return by remake of Murugdoss Tamil Super hit `Katti’ and changed it suitably to suit the requirement of Telugu audience specially sprinkling lot of comedy.   

            He has gone back to director VV Vinayak, specialist of                      action movies who gave him super hit Tagore earlier.

Firstly he has come back to shape dramatically without looking being sucked and worn out.   He looked so trim that he did not look odd with

Kajal agarwal who is in her late 20s and about a year back she worked with Chiru son Ram Charan.  In his hey days Chiranjeevi was known for the energetic dances (with Radha, Vijaya Shanti and Sridevi in couple of movies)  and bone breaking action scenes.  After NTR retiring, he filled the gap with controlled and fantastic dialogue delivery.   He is pretty decent in emoting too and has great comic timing.    As such he was a complete package.   With majority of his movie were money spinners and truly he was a MEGASTAR.   In Khadi No. 150, none of these traits have diminished if you discount it to his over the sixty years age.  

Chiru with Devisri Prasad

Lucky the bankable Devi Sri Prasad has given very special foot tapping music with every song being catchy and Chirannjeevi and his charographer including Lawrance for a guest number did great job.    Very cleverly keeping Chiranjeevi’s age in view, the steps
were not jerky but fluid and Chiru has put all his experience to pull them off and the results is there for all the see and his fans to be thrilled.  


When Chiru is there action cannot be far behind.   Surely at his age he cannot be as agile as he was, but thanks to the cable technology being used in all actions scenes in Telugu and Tamil movies, and daredevil feats done by the stuntman, all the action scenes have came off well.    But what stole thunder is the great sense of comic timing of Chiru.   He alongwith Ali, Brahmanandam, and Posani gave great comical relief in an otherwise serious proceedings and it really elevated the movie.  The subject of corporatisation and land grabbing has given Chiru lot of scope for his trade mark dialogue delivery.   No other movie could have given him such ample scope to unleash his talent that is in abundance.

The welcome given by Telugu audience to the comeback of Chiru is astounding with tickets getting sold out for entire week in not entire Andhra, Telangana, but UAE, US and UK.   UAE has given a holiday to all the Telugu speaking people on 11^th Jan, the day of its release.    Within a week of its release the gross collection has crossed Rs. 100 crores and there is much to come.    It is the second highest grosser in Telugu industry next to Bahubali but if one considers the small budget of this movie compared to Bahubali, returns of Khaidi No. 150 are much more.  

The stupendous success of Khaidi No. 150 has forced all the younger heros to welcome him back and Chiru is going to add a new dimension in Telugu industry.     The success of this movie is going to give a new lease of life to Chiru in films and Telugu movie goers are in for feast of movies from the senior most member of the seven heros MEGA family  

BOSS IS GOING TO ROCK

S. PRABHAKAR

17.1.2017