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Middle Class Melodies (2020), an underrated entertainer
Middle Class Melodies (2020) starring Anand Devarakonda (Vijay Devarakonda‘s brother) and Varsha Bollamma is a movie with a simple story and it was entertaining. I liked this feel-good movie, a genre which has become a rarity in recent times. Raghava, a graduate living in a small town dreaming of becoming big by cashing his culinary skills. Did he succeed by setting up a restaurant in the nearby city of Guntur and did he marry his sweetheart is the story? Director Vinod Anantoju has a done job in the casting. Every character including Chaitanya Garikipati as Gopal, Divya Sripada as Gauthami and Goparaju Ramana as Kondalrao were perfect for their roles. A…
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Sarkaru Vaari Paata (2022), was disappointing
I like Mahesh Babu, I found his film Srimanthudu (2015) to be a total entertainer and I watched it a few times. So, I was curious with his latest film Sarkaru Vaari Paata (2022). Sadly, it offered an incohesive screenplay and a uninspired story. A good performance by Mahesh Babu and Keerthy Suresh couldn’t save the trainwreck. It gets a mangoidiots rating of Rotten. It seems the director Parasuram wanted to do a film around the plot of the infamous Vijay Mallya default case of Rs 9000 crores. Instead of going all-out on this and showing how the hero saves the Indian banks, we see a hotchpotch of events. Whatever the…
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Cinema Bandi (2021)
What happens when a few villagers find a high-end digital camera and decide to make a movie? This interesting plot gets explored in Cinema Bandi (2021). Director Praveen Kandregula has cast the lead actors aptly and they bring the characters to life, yet the film fails to keep you engaged after some time. The Telugu comedy is available on Netflix and gets a Raw rating. In a remote village near the Andhra-Karnataka state border, lives a hardworking autorickshaw driver Veerababu with his family. After spotting a camera left behind in his auto, he gets smitten by the cinema bug and decides to shoot one with the help of his friend…
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Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo (2020)
After watching stylish star Allu Arjun‘s performance in Pushpa (2021) I watched his earlier film Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo (2020), a Telugu action drama that was a super hit. Unabashedly this was completely a formula film with a dare-devil yet kind-hearted hero, there is mother’s sentiment, duet songs and fights for every twenty minutes. Yet, it was enjoyable. Available on Netflix, it gets a Ripe rating. The story is as old as Indian epics. Out of greed, the hero’s father, a manager for a super-rich family, switches his newborn boy baby with his owner’s baby. As expected the rich boy, though growing up without wealth, exhibits all attributes of a Bollywood hero…
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Climax (2021)
Climax (2021) is a Telugu murder mystery. While the mystery was obvious from the beginning the satirical humour throughout the film was enjoyable. Had the director focused on developing a better screenplay, this movie could’ve been more engaging than it turned out to be. Available on Amazon Prime Video, it gets a Raw rating. Vijay Modi is a billionaire staying in a 7-star suite to hide from his creditors, one day he says he sees a young lady and invites her to his room, for a gift of Rs 1 crore. The next day he is seen brutally murdered. Rajendra Prasad as Vijay Modi is impressive, he has brought out…
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Pushpa: The Rise (2021)
Allu Arjun starring Pushpa: The Rise (2021) had received a lot of coverage in the last few months, the two songs featuring Rashmika Mandanna and Samantha Ruth were the talk of social media for weeks. Reading the one-liner that it was about Red-Sandalwood smuggling I thought it will be yet another mass hero, masala film which shows the ruthless hero to be a saint even though everything he does is illegal – it was exactly that, but surprisingly the predictable screenplay was highly engaging and I liked it. Award-worthy performance by Allu Arjun. The film available on Amazon Prime Video gets my Ripe rating. Even though he comes only at…
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Sundari (2021)
Sundari (2021) is a Telugu drama featuring Shamna Kasim aka Poorna and Arjun Ambati. It is available on Amazon Prime Video and gets a ‘Raw’ rating. The film follows the life of a young bride hailing from a village, married hurriedly to a software engineer in Hyderabad after the hero falls in love after the first sight of her. Transplanted to a new environment, with no support system or family to comfort her, she is faced with solving an impossible situation in her own way. The story is not a new one, we have seen variations of it in Indian cinema and World cinema, but Sundari handles it in a…
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Super Over (2021)
Super Over (2021), the Telugu film by Praveen Varma released on Aha has an intriguing premise. It was about the huge sums of money and the crime network operating in illegal cricket betting in India. I guess it was inspired by the IPL betting scam that was uncovered a few years ago. The film starts well, unfortunately, the plot loses strength in the middle and we couldn’t wait for the whole thing to get over. Because of this, what should’ve got a ‘Ripe’ in our mangoidiots score gets only a ‘Raw’. Naveen Chandra as Kaasi comes as a youngster with a huge family debt to take care of. He is…
