Sankrantiki Vastunnamu (Telugu Movie) – a breeze of fresh air

By

S. Prabhakar

At a time when every film, every hero right from the top  5 young Telugu heroes viz., Allu Arjun, Prabhas, Ram Charan, Jr. NTR and Mahesh Babu to old and senior stars like Chiranjivi, Ballayya, Pawan Kalyan and Nagarjuna and even relatively newcomers like Vijaya Devarakonda and Nikhil are in the race to sign mega-budget movies only to be released in multi-languages simultaneously on a PAN India basis, Venkatesh has chosen a different path of going for Telugu movie made at reasonable budget only for Telugu audience for release only in two Telugu states.   This is what top Tamil star Vijay does and his stand-alone Tamil movies make anything between 200-300 crores business which is good enough and he has not ventured a PAN India movie till now.   The heartening thing is that this small-budget movie which was released without much fanfare and 80 feet cut out of Venkatesh, turned out to be a sleeper hit collecting Rs. 160 cr in 4 days and piped at the post the much-hyped (almost for 3 years) Ram Charan Shankar cambo Game Changer and Ballyya `Daku Maharaj’ on a rate of return basis.

       

                                                                   

I always maintained that every Telugu movie or South Indian movie cannot be a PAN India movie and pumping in over RS. 500 crores is not justified.    A lot of compromises have to be made to make a Telugu/south Indian movie a PAN  India movie.   The nativity is lost, movies are not rooted in the local culture, customs, traditions, and attaires and the biggest casualties has been the comedy, which has been back bone of the Telugu industry for over 6 decades.   Heros, Heroins, villain roles can make over to suit all Indian audiences, but the brand of comedy that suits a Telugu or Tamil movie can never be acceptable in any other language, especially by Hindi, Bengali or Punjabi audiences and vice versa.   As a result in all the Telugu / Tamil PAN India movies, the producer directors have completely done away with comedy whether it is Robo, Bahubali I and II, RRR, Pushpa I and II at a time when most of the Telugu movies had at least half a dozen comedians and many comedians like Rao Gopal Rao, Kota, Brahmanandam, ML Narayana, Vennala Kishore, Rajendra Prasad, and Naresh enjoyed star status.  Comedy heroes like Rajendra Prasad and Allari Naresh might have acted in more than 100 movies as heroes in purely comedy movies.    For decades Brahmanandam was the topmost and highest-paid comedian and one of the very few comedians who was conferred Padma Shri.  

Coming to the movie, it is a simple light-hearted comedy movie minus logic or reasoning.   The story is wafer thin, a top IT giant CEO who is on a visit to AP, is kidnapped by a gang and demands the release of a dreaded criminal in exchange for his release.   CM is advised to take the services of ex-top cop Venkatesh who is peacefully settled in a village with his wife and four children in a big joint family in a picturesque Godavari district.  The responsibility to bring him on the board for this assignment was put on his ex-lover and high-ranking police officer Meenakshi Chaudhuri.    From then starts a roller coaster non-stop laugh riot, first the triangle between Venkatesh, his wife and ex-lover under the same roof, then the entire gang of Venkatesh, his wife, children, and lover all set out on a mad chase of getting the dreaded criminal out of the jail and from the uncompromising and honest jailer who does not listen to anyone including CM, then the dreaded criminal getting killed and the entire gang moving around with the dead man to make believe that he is alive and ultimately rescuing the CEO.  

Anil Ravipudi hits the Bull's eye again 

The lion's share for the success of the movie should go to Anil Ravipudi, who has written the story, screenplay, dialogues and directed the movie.   Anil has developed a reputation for churning out rip-roaring comedies with top stars, from Patas to F2 and F3 (both with Venkatesh), Sarileruneekevvaru with Mahesh Babu.  After a one-off departure to action movie Bhagawat Kesari with Ballaya, he has come back to the comedy genre and delivered an entertaining hit movie.   Though there is hardly any story, it is the racy screenplay and engaging nonstop comedy that makes the movie watchable.   He succeeded in extracting comedy from almost every actor whether there are comedians or not, whether it is father and co-brothers of Venkatesh, son, wife and ex-lover, the egoistic jailer so wonderfully played by Upendra Lamaye, and Sai Kumar as his assistant (who is famous for his baritone voice and top notch dubbing artist cum actor, whom his jailer boss teases as having weak voice), Naresh as hapless CM and Ganesh as Party President.

Another appreciable thing about this movie and Anil is that though it features a top senior actor like Venakatesh, both Aishwarya Rajesh and Meenakshi Chaudhuri have an equal role and there is hardly any scene where Ventakesh is there and either of them or both of them were not there.    It is so refreshing compared to the minuscule screen time Kaira Advani got in Game Changer just to do song and dance scenes.  At a time when senior heroes on the wrong side of their 60s trying to do action scenes and still project macho image, Venkatesh is so sportive to accept a role, where after accepting the tough assignment of bring back a kidnapped CEO from a dreaded criminal, he was shown to have cramps all over the body, sprains his back trying to pick up something fallen from chair, cannot climb one floor without panting for breath and long forgotten shooting.  He is in his comic elements like in Malleswari, F2 and F3.  Aishwarya got the role of her lifetime and she did an excellent job as a jealous and possessive wife, Meenakshi is good as a cop but her comedy was bland compared to other actors.    The child actor who did Venkatesh's son stole the thunder from many seniors but I have a serious reservation in Director making the child artist mouth expletives in a couple of scenes, but thankfully though it is repeated a few times in the movie the dialogues were masked by background music.    This type of dialogues are not expected in a movie which can be termed a family-oriented comedy movie that too from a Child artists

After a long time, we had a movie whose music and songs had become super hit before the release of the movie.   Bheems Ceciroleo music and refreshing singing by Raman Gogula and Madhupriya have contributed to the success of the movie in a big way.   Godari gattumeeda Ramachilakave and Gobbiyallo Gobbiyallo were chart bursters.    Raman is the same music director who scored music and sang for many movies of Pawan Kalyan over a couple of decades back.

Dil Raju gamble pays off

Dil Raju is king of the distribution of movies in both Telugu states and is counted one of the biggest producers now.    With Game Changer he completed 50 movies as a producer.   He is so prolific dare devil producer that he not only produced the Rs. 500 crores Game Changer and medium budget Sankrantiki Vastunnamu but released both in the Sankranti season just 4 days apart, and add `Daku Maharaj’ to it and distributed all the 3 top Telugu releases in this Sankranti season and how difficult it must have been distributing screens to his own 3 movies.    That is how he bets, one had he produces mega-budget masala movies like Varasudu and Game Changer and on the other hand small budget but very successful movies like Shatamanam Bhavati and Balagam.   Once again he hit bull’s eye by medium budget Sankratiki Vastunnamu while burnt fingers with Game Changer

I hope, the grand success of Sankrantiki Vastunnamu despite stiff competition from Game Changer and Daku Maharaj in Telugu and a few more movies in other languages during Sankranti season, and get good number of screens in both Telugu states, will start a new trend and give assurance to the Telugu producers that small and medium-budget movies with Telugu nativity, a family dramas and comedies and made exclusively for Telugu audience will be well received by the audience.  Every producer need not make all compromises, or changeovers to tailor their movies for a PAN India release.   Going by rate of return, movies like Sankrantiki Vastunnam may prove to be a safer bet compared to a Game Changer. 

Strongly recommended to have a hearty laugh if you do not tax your minds for logic or reasoning.   Other language audiences may have to wait for its OTT release dubbed in other languages.

 

S. Prabhakar

18.1.2025