Movie Review – S/o Satyamurthy (Telugu)

Audience have high expectations when a successful director/writer comes out with his new film with another successful young hero in the lead. The expectations go up manifold when there is a huge star cast too. Writer-cum-director Trivikiram upped his own benchmark and that of the industry with his last hit and also some of the previous ones.

There is a saying in English that reads “Too many cooks spoil the broth”. The same applies to this film in a different manner “Too many stars spoil the scene” and here is the why of it.

The story is nothing new and basically is driven by a challenge thrown at the hero. Out of total length of 162 minutes, the movie goes very slow for the first 80 minutes with some excitement in the last 5 minutes of the first half of approximately 85 minutes. The story revolves around how Viraj Anand(Allu Arjun) gets challenged at various points in his life when he had to decide between values and money. He prefers to choose the path of values as learnt from his father Satyamurthy( played by Prakash Raj) and succeeds in living by those beliefs and also makes his challengers (Rajendra Prasad and Rao Ramesh) understand and realize the importance of values. Rajendra Prasad delivered dialogues in a comical way irrespective of the requirement of the scene which the director must have paid attention to while shooting. 

Hero Allu Arjun looked different in most scenes especially because of his hairdo which varied in most frames. The makeup was not up to the mark. There was too much of unrealistic drama that unfolds especially in the scenes after the hero’s family is forced by circumstances to relocate to India. The action scenes by Peter Hein are overdone and felt prolonged. They are not a match for the story and the screenplay. Out of the 6 songs that the film has, the last song ‘Super macchhi …’ alone is good and may be that is the reason the film was promoted using only this song. Music by Devi Sri Prasad is below his standards. Allu Arjun is loved for his dances and the audience did not get the treat they deserved from him on this aspect except in that last song. The scene in which Rao Ramesh and MS Narayana get a lesson on relationship from the hero is good. Samantha played her role as Sameera in a cute manner.

It is the second half of the film that saved it from collapsing. The screenplay in the second half at Devaraj’s(played by Upendra) house lacked substance except for the comedy that entertained the audience with Brahmanandam(whose character enters at around 130th minute) and Ali almost taking the centre stage. That too is a redo of the comedy of the types seen in the recent movies. The fight scenes and other settings at Devraj’s house are just too unrealistic even by Indian cinema standards. Kota Srinivasa Rao has nothing much to do and his presence was wasted. So are the roles of Sampath, Sneha and Nithya Menon. Such actors needed to be utilized for in a proper way, else they are a minus for the film. When there was not much to play those could have been played by any other junior actors. Vennela Kishore did his bit in tickling the viewers.

As is typical of Trivikram’s movies, the dialogues are good. The writer preferred comical route to convey serious life messages and that went well with the audience. One such line delivered by Ali for which the audience were in splits is: “Adrushtam vacchhi varam icchhe lopu, daridram vacchhi lip kiss pettindih”( By the time good luck came to give boons, bad luck arrived and gave a lip kiss). There are several such lines in the second half.

As four girls were walking out of the theater after the show, one of them quipped “aa yemundih cinemalo second-halflo comedy tappa” (what is there in the film except comedy in the second half). The movie would have been a bigger disappointment but for that comedy that this girl mentioned. Overall Trivikram just made it with pass marks with this film and not the distinctions he got with some of his earlier works. For the movie which released with the tagline 'viluvaley aasthi'(values are property),the audience might prefer to give the tagline 'second halfey life'( second half is life).