Another one of those instances in life when the individual is deceived. Saucy posters, juicy Item-Star Mummaith Khan, and a director who is well known for those good-old blockbusters* make Punnami Nagu a perfect outing for single men on a Friday afternoon at a single screen. The outcome: we walk out in one hour when the letters BREAK were displayed on screen. My friend and I sat on the sofa seats of Sensation after a tea at Cafe Yadgar well expecting a high-quality B grade film, but began rolling on the screen was a premium quality D grade film! Twenty minutes in to the film and my friend whispered in to my ear: I don’t think you will be able to review this film!
Hmm…I don’t quite know what to write. Feels strange. I vaguely remember the film begining with a conversation up in heaven between two celestial beings about humans, their atrocities on Nature and how they will eventually pay for it. Hmm…wow! I thought; a Mummaith Khan film with potential for adult entertainment along with a story to do with global issues. The celestial being then narrates on how the humans can appease Lord Shiva for their redemption; apparently, this will hapen when two snakes will dance, combine their energies, and blah…blah…The female snake is Mummaith Khan. Even as these two celestial snakes are dancing, a local lady-tantric and three snake-skin traders have teamed to capture power of the world by some means. The three villians are facinated by the snake skin and shoot one down and are chided for their foolish act. Now, the chase is catch a woman who has a snake symbol or something like that on her back. This woman is again Mummaith Khan who is first shown dancing away in Malayasai. She is also the daughter of a police officer who is killed by these villains when he is investigating in to the case of the missing girls (the girls from the hostel these villians are kidnapping, opening their blouses to see if any one is the snake-lady). Mumaith then vows to take revenge on these guys. Meanwhile, there is a gang of good-for-nothing petty theives are going on about their daily lives. Describing their petty lives is beyond the mandate of this blog. Anyways, one of the gang members is Rajiv Kanakala who save Mammaith and admit her in the hospital in an incident when she is beaten black and blue by the goons. The goons find out from their tantric guru that Mummaith is the girl they need so they force the doctor to implant the celestial jewel in to her (they do it on her thigh; me thinks they should have done it on her chest).
Even though the duty doctor has told the goons that she will be in coma for six months, she walks out and enters the house of Rajiv Kanakala. She is now the celestial snake and the movie takes a break. My friend and I decided that although we came prepared to see crap, this was much worse than crap. It is simply unwatchable! Given the movie lover I am, I am still wonder as I write this blog how the film will proceed towards it’s logical conclusion. I am sure the lady snake will find it’s male partner and they will dance finally to appease Lord Shiva or whatever. It is impossible to believe that A Kodandarami Reddy* has directed this film. This director played a vital role in shaping up and directing some of Chiranjeevi’s biggest blockbusters. In fact, Chiru-Kodandarami were the blockbuster combo. And now, this same director has come up with this shameless product. I mean, what is this? It is not a horror film, not a scary film, not even a sleazy film. It is absolutely bad with pathetic direction, awful screenplay and an idiotic story.
I am even surprised I have been able to write so much of a review for this film. My dear male counterparts, do not make the mistake of watching this film with your family for it may be the end of your relationship with them or it may be the last movie together. Mummaith Khan is totally useless in her acting here. Nope, there is no exposing either; its the same Mummaith style pelvic gyration dance steps. As for the single guys whose mouths are watering for Mummaith, just forget about this crap and watch that item song from Pokiri that Mummaith is all about.
Mr. Inkenti’s Movienomics Verdict: Two Thumbs Way Way Way…..Way Down…Down…Down!!!
*I stand corrected about the director for this film. I first wrote that the director is Kodi Ramakrishna. In fact, the reason why I ventured in to this film on it’s first day is thinking it is a Kodi-Mummaith Combo. Thanks to hello for posting the comment and correcting me.
My previous blog post was on Feb 24th, almost more than a month back, and much to my surprise the few who regularly read my blog called to enquire why I had stopped posting. There are times in life when life gets ahead of you and thats what happened to me. In addition, there was nothing exciting at the box office; at least nothing worth a long drive in traffic and the ticket money. And then there are times when you know for sure when you want to take a hold of your life; for me, that time was when I saw the posters of Billa featuring ‘Arundhati’ Anushka in a two-piece and the buxom Namitha. With ladies like these on the posters, it is tempting to bunk office, buy tickets in black, and sweat it out in the summer heat. So is Billa, yet another (re)remake of Don, worth the style and hype? The answer is a No, with a capital N.
Lets be clear on one thing: the Telugu Billa is not the remake of the SRK-Don, which was a re-remake of the first Don. The Telugu Billu borrows the name from the more recent Ajith starrer in Tamil titled Billa, which is remake of Rajnikanth’s Billa, which was a remake of the first Don, it is more or less faithful. I’ve honestly lost count of the remakes and their respective modifications to the story by adding really silly twists towards the climax. Billa (Prabhas) is a transnational weapons dealer (looking at the quantities he was selling I think he is into wholesale), smuggler, murderer etc whom a Grandpa-type ACP Krishna Murthy (Krishnam Raju) is after and has come all the way to Malayasia for the chase. Each has informers in either side who as usual lose their lives for silly superiors. Billa is caught one fine day only to die in the arms of ACP who burries him with the help of a Andhra tiffin center owner (Ali). Ali is curious to see the guy who gave sleepless nights to the police and on seeing the dead body is delighted to say that his friend Ranga, a petty thief in Vizag, is the exact look-alike. ACP plans to recruit and train Ranga (Prabhas) in to becoming Billa and help get all the secrets of the gang in a red pen drive (yes, ACP gives Ranga training on how to use a computer and also how to use the latest in computer technology, for Tollywood standards at least, a red pen-drive). In the mean time, ACP dies and Ranga is stuck with no proof. Finally, Ranga finds out that the Big Boss of Billa is Devil who is none other than the interpol officer who is heading the investigation. So all ends well, with Ranga settling the score with the bad guys. I didn’t forget about the two ladies because they are just there like furniture. Lisa (the voluptous, buxom, and obeese Namitha) is Billa’s girl friend and has a horrible telugu accent. She is killed when she finds out that Billa is actually Ranga (I am guessing she didnt want anything to do with the film mid-way). Maya (Anushka) is here for revenge as Billa killed her brother when he decided to leave the gang. Yup, Ranga and Maya get together at the end.
accent and tone literally kills the style he generates when he is silently doing the slow motion fashion parades with his black blazers and sunglasses. As Ranga, he repeats the flopped Bujjigaadu acting. There are times when he is totally out of style—it appears as though he is doing a cat-walk of sorts. Namitha is only there to show her fat thighs and a mini boob-show in a song sequence. Anushka is made to act like a manequin with black dresses, dark sun glasses, and always with dilated nostriles (is this style?) and keeps moving her head from left to right. There are scenes when she is showing her cleveage, cleveage Plus (a reasonable portion of her breasts), and cleveage Premium (parts of her breasts are popping out of the dress), and there are scenes when she is all zipped up and sometimes these scenes alternate. It almost looks as though the director was beggin her to show more cleveage, but Arundhati amma only agreed for so much. The bikini-act is okay, but it is all too artificial. Even though there is enough of skin-show, it just does not strike the pulse. The biggest sore point of the film is Krishnam Raju’s sorry state of acting. His extended role and presence strips the film of all it’s attempts at glamor. He is old, his usage of English is like watching a film from the 60’s or 70s, and is only there in the film because his family is producing this flick. Being Prabhas’s uncle or relative he has done more harm to Prabhas’s film than help by producing it. In fact, in the first half he totally dominates Prabhas. His attempts at comedy are pathetically bad to say the least. I pity the director as he had to put up with such a joker as producer and actor. As for director Meher Ramesh, after the dissapointing Ashok and Kantri I wonder how he gets offers to direct. In spite of claiming to have user special cameras (Super 35 I think) and stylised taking, I found nothing different or rich in this film except that we get to see Malayasia’s solid urban infrastructure. Although the film’s story drags and makes no sense for the majority of it’s run time, the pace of the film is not allowed to slow down. For the most part, the director’s interpretation of style is misconceived. Cummon now, black suits, short skirts, high heels, bikini, cleveage, dark goggles, pen-drives and slow motion—is this style and sleek? and is the new benchmark for Tollywood that the makers are claiming in their press meets? Meher Ramesh needs to take a break. However much Meher Ramesh says (check out his interview on idlebrian.com, he did the same about his previos piece of trash titled Kantri) that this film will set new standards in style or that Prabhas will become Tollywood’s super-hero; this film is below average.
The songs are average except for a couple. The last song with Anushka is the highlight; check out the butt-step where Prabhas is patting on Anushka’s butt and pulling up her shots! and Anushka’s cool get-ups. The fact of the matter is that this film has got it’s opening curiousity only because of Anushka’s two-piece act post-Arundhati’s star status. Without Anuskha this film would have fallen flat and I guess the makers of the film know this, which is why two entire lines in a song are dedicated to her star status: bommali bommali ninu vodala…There is no comedy in the film. Hansika just comes and goes. Once again Supreet as Ranjith, 2nd in command to Billa, looks great and in fact looks more don-like than Prabhas who sounds like a kid when he opens his mouth to speak. On the whole, there is too much of old man Krishnam Raju as the ACP and that wrecks the film. Story lacks the punch and the performances by the lead actors is dissapointing. Towards the end, Ranga turns back to the audience to say “I’ll be back” (I wonder whats with the Arnold lines)…does that mean there will be a sequel? Oh God no! SRK-Farhan are planning Don 2….Prabhas-Meher are planning Billa 2; can I file a PIL please against re-remakes of Don?!
