khaleja movie review

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Movie: Khaleja
My Rating: 3.5/5
Banner: Sri Kanakaratna Movies
Music: Mani Sharmaa
Cinematography: Yash Bhatt, Sunil Patel
Lyricists: Ramajogayya Sastry, Sirivennela Seetharama Sastry
Art (production designer): B Anand Sai
Fights: Peter Heins & Ram - Lakshman
Producers: Singanamala Ramesh Babu & C Kalyan
Story, Dialogues,Screenplay & Direction: Trivikram Sreenivas
Cast: Mahesh Babu, Anushka, Prakash Raj, Subbaraju, Brahmanandam, Rao Ramesh, Ali, Sunil, Archana (Veda), Tanikella Bharani, Shafi, Dharmavarapu Subramanyam etc
Release Date: 07th Oct 2010

Story

The story revolves around a remote village in Andhra Pradesh plauged by a strange disease killing a lot of people. The soothsayer of the village predicts that God would come to their village for rescue. Meanwhile, Raju (Mahesh Babu) a cab driver in Hyderabad goes to Rajasthan to handover an insurance cheque to a man's family who dies in his car. In a strange situation, Raju meets a man from the village and gets to know about their problem. Soon Raju realises he is none other than the God-sent, the soothsayer predicted, and the rest of the story is all about how Raju takes up the responsibility to rescue the village from the clutches of evil. Telugu Movie Reviews

Artists Performance:

Mahesh Babu who amazed everybody with his Uttarandhra dialect in his dialogue delivery in Pokiri this time uttered dialogues in Godavari dialect. He is simply superb in mouthing the dialogues penned by Trivikram. He is also exceptionally good in the action episodes and of course acting. You can see the hardwork he has put in for this movie on the screen. He changes his body language for this movie. His costumes are cool and he used scarf throughout the movie and it helped in Mahesh Babu look different. Mahesh Babu shed a lot of weight and looks extremely handsome in the movie.

Anushka looks gorgeous and special focus has been made on her legs when it comes to dialogues. Her screen chemistry with Mahesh was neat and not much of a skin show from her this time.

Technical Departments:

Khaleja movie has a divine element in it. Trivikram balanced the divine part of it by saying that there is a God in everybody and all we need is an intent to serve others. The aspect of killing village men by mixing toxins in water seem to have resemblance to that of Sahara (2005) movie. The entire first half of the movie is like a road-film where the hero and heroine bond with each other while traveling. The second half sports the main story of the movie. Trivikram is a terrific dialogue writer and he gave his best dialogues to Mahesh Babu in Khaleja. Trivikram has a class taste while conceiving comedy episodes and he made sure that there are many episodes of such nature in the movie. Direction of the film is good in parts and screenplay should have been more effective. The beginning point and interval bang are good. Trivikram couldn’t justify the second half with right content and tone. Trivikram should have ironed the script better and made it concise/effective. The unbreakable glass episode of the movie seems to have been inspired by Sabrina (1955) movie (especially lady secretaries dancing on the glass to test strength).

Other Departments:

Dialogues by Trivikram are huge asset to the movie. Music by Mani Sharma is good in three songs
(Sadasiva, Taxi and Piliche). Though Yash Bhatt is the official cinematographer, parts of the movie were also shot by KV Guhan (Athadu) and Sunil Patel (Hum Tum). Cinematography is very good and there is a visual theme for the movie. Fights by Peter Heins and Ram Lakshman are excellent (especially the interval fight and pre-climax fight (checkout this trailer)). Editing is adequate. Production values are good.

Final Analysis:

“One who lives for his own self is considered to be dead. One who lives for others with unselfishness and love live forever” – Swami Vivekananda

First half of the movie is entertaining though there is no story in it. Second half should have been better. Climax disappoints. Plus points of the movie are Mahesh Babu (terrific dialogue comedy and superb characterization) and Trivikram brand entertainment

. On the flipside, the second half plays a spoilsport and movie lacks consistent tone. We have to wait and see how Khaleja works at the box office.

0 comments: