Kanappa – the worst Telugu mythological movie ever made  

At last I watched Kannapa on OTT, to see how badly it is made after my first unsuccessful attempt to watch it in theatre on 4^th day in Vizag when the show was cancelled as atleast 10 tickets were not sold.   Honestly it took huge efforts to complete it in 3-4 instalments.

Though Mohan Babu has pumped in huge budget of over Rs. 200 crores on non-bankable Son Vishnu’s movie and packed it with top stars from various industries like Akshay Kumar, Sarat Kumar, Mohan Lal and our own Prabhas as a safety net.   Right from the start of the movie, Manchu family has given it huge publicity in social media and the trolling batch was equally active.   Ever since the stupendous success of Bahubali and RRR, every Telugu producer and every director feels that big budget and over the top vfx are the only factors which makes a movie a sure shot success.    But what they forget is that every movie needs to have a good story, screen play and capable director to come out with an engaging and racy narration.    Kannappa lacked all of these and added to that pathetic vfx which is as bad like pre vfx period 1980s quality.   So much father son publicity was given about shooting New Zealand and what we had is a huge green open land which you can find anywhere in Shimla (specially Dalhousie) and Dharmashala.  

The challenge while making any mythological or historical movies like Kannapa is the basic story from the available sources is very thin, the develop that into a full fledged movie some interesting and acceptable side story has to be developed, and have all ingredients of romance, comedy and ofcourse action.   There is  not much material about Kanappa,   Not seen Kannada Rajkumar’s Kalahasti mahatyam, but Krisham Raju made a very interesting movie `Bhakta Kannapa’ sticking mainly on Kannappa theme and an excellent comedy track by Rao Gopal Rao and Mada and super hit songs that brought lot of name, fame and money for Krishnam Raju.  

But in Kannapa for major portion of 3 hour long movie, it was more of irrelevant tribal gang wars and boring and very modern looking and cheap romantic track.  Akshay is looking like a cartoon character as Lord Shiv, Mohan Lal hardly had one scene, Mohan Babu is not very effective, the only saving grace is Prabhas, but he comes too late after almost 2 hours, seasoned senior actor Sarat Kumar too is good.   The movie goers like me who have seen NTR and Character Actor Balayya as Lord Shiv cannot digest AK as Shiv.   The actual Kanappa story starts after 2 and ½ hours run time and that too was handled very badly.    The Mohan Babu may feel that it is the best performance of Vishnu till now, but even his best efforts are pedestal.   The image of Mohan Babu as anti-brahmin and lampooning them in every second film, has not help their cause when they wanted to make a movie on mythological subject.  

Director Mukesh Kumar Singh, who shot into popularity with some popular TV serials, is not mature enough to handle such subject with such budget.    Apart from the thin story line and lose screenplay, his handling of VFX and action scenes is really inadept.   The action scenes over the bridge (which resembles the action scene of Magadheera) and the giant spider scenes are so poorly executed that what was created by Vithalacharya in 1960s in NTR movies like Jagadekaveeruni Kadha, Gulebakavali Kadha etc, looked far better and executed.    Music – both songs and BGM is below average.

Rather than Vishnu, the movie should have been made with Prabhas, with good script focusing more on Kanappa, Kalahasti and related stories with more talented director handling the project.   Then it could have had good chance of hitting bull’s eye.  

The bombing of Kanappa could be the last straw on Mohan babu back.   Neither his films nor his children’s films are running at the box office and he has blown large portion of what he has earned over the last 40 years.   He should think of making a very late come back in villain roles like Jagapati Babu, which are now going to Bollywood under employed stars like Sanjay Dutt and Bobby Doel.  Mohan babu is far superior actor than them.   

S. Prabhakar