After making a superb entry with ‘Uppena’, young Mega hero Vaisshnav Tej faced back-to-back failures in the form of ‘Konda Polam’ and ‘Ranga Ranga Vaibhavanga’. He is aiming to get back on the success track with a mass entertainer like ‘Aadikeshava’ which was released today. With Sreeleela as the heroine and a top production house bankrolling the film, there is a decent buzz surrounding this project. Let us see if the film managed to impress the viewers or not.
Story:
Balu (Vaisshnav Tej) is a regular middle class youngster who completes graduation but is yet to get a job. He spends time with his friends but decides to take up a job on his mother’s request. He manages to impress a cosmetic company CEO named Chitra (Sreeleela) and gets the job. He falls in love with her and makes her fall in love too. Just when things are going smoothly, Balu’s life takes a sudden turn as he finds out that his parents are not his real parents and his name is Rudra Kaleshwar Reddy. He then goes to his own village Brahmasamudhram and gets into loggerheads with Changa Reddy (Joju George). What is Rudra’s background? What happens to his real family? Will he win over Changa Reddy? The answers to these questions form the rest of the story.
Analysis
Hero’s family belongs to Rayalaseema. His father is a very respected man in the society. With the hope of ending faction wars, he marries a member of his family to the rival gang member. But she is being tortured in that house and the hero’s family gets seriously affected by the villain. The hero lives far away from Rayalaseema and was brought up in the city. He finds out about his past and returns to his village. He puts an end to the villain’s atrocities and takes revenge on him for all the suffering his family went through. We are not talking about movies like ‘Aadi’, ‘Chennakeshava Reddy’ and ‘Samba’ which arrived 20 years ago. This is the story of ‘Aadikeshava’! Director Srikanth Reddy took the beaten-to-the-death plot of the Rayalaseema faction wars and cooked this film. Though the story is age-old, things would have been better if he tried to induce some freshness in the narration and engage the audience. But the director made sure that there was no novelty and emotion in the film.
Hero is a jobless guy. He is constantly scolded by his dad but backed a lot by his mom. A big company’s CEO gets impressed by the hero and falls for him. These are the characters with which we start the movie. The director clearly indicated through these characters that it is going to be a routine commercial cinema. Hero works for a huge cosmetic company and he points out the fault in their ad campaign by saying that being beautiful is more important than being fair. Heroine who is a CEO praises him and constantly runs around her employee as she falls in love with him. This illogical track has been used numerous times before and the songs turn out to be cigarette breaks for the audience. The movie becomes more routine when the backdrop shifts from city to village.
When Joju George is the villain, one expects some kind of speciality in the character but he did the most stereotypical factionist character we have ever seen. The villain does mining without caring for people and the hero arrives to stop it and take revenge for his family thereby saving the villagers. There is nothing special about this. Had the hero and villain characters been elevated more, the masses would have been more interested. But ‘Aadikeshava’ fails to impress. Hero burns a goon alive in front of the temple and such scenes usually give goosebumps to the masses. But there is no emotion in the scene barring the loud background score. As the producer said, the director managed to showcase different ways to kill the baddies. There is a scene where the hero lights a cigarette from a person who is being burnt alive. Barring that, there is nothing new in this movie.
Performances:
Vaisshnav Tej looked handsome in this film. His character did not have a lot of scope to showcase his acting capabilities. His performance is quite ordinary. This full-fledged mass hero role did not suit him at all as Vaisshnav is still in the early stages of his career. It always looked like he was trying to punch above his weight. While his character is named ‘Rudra’, he fails to showcase the required ferocity in this role. A lot of normal roles get elevated due to the hero’s screen presence and aura. That did not happen for ‘Aadikeshava’. Sreeleela did a regular commercial heroine role which had no substance. All she needed to was look glamorous and she did that with aplomb. Joju Goerge did a lot of versatile roles in Malayalam but he was given a monotonous role in Telugu. His Changa Reddy character did not give Joju any scope to perform. Suman is okay as a politician from Rayalaseema. Tanikella Bharani, Radhika, Jayaprakash, Aparna Das and others did their job well.
Technicians:
One expects a lot when GV Prakash Kumar’s name is on the poster. But the composer did not make his mark on ‘Aadikeshava’. He delivered what was required for this script. The routine commercial movie had regular music. His songs were passable but provided enough scope for the hero and heroine to show their dancing skills. The background score is too loud at times. Dudley’s cinematography is decent. The producers did not compromise as we can see the standards of Sithara Entertainments once again in this film. Debutant Srikanth followed the regular commercial template right from the scripting stage to taking. It is shocking to see such a routine output from a new-age director. He executed the action scenes quite well but there is nothing more than that.
Verdict: ‘Aadikeshava’.. Shiva Shivaaa!!!