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Balu (Manoj Manchu) has only one mission in his life - to become a
great playback singer like SP Balu. He challenges a landlord in his
village and comes to Hyderabad to become a singer. Captain Rao (Mohan
Babu) stays in the opposite house. He is an old-fashioned man who hates
the lifestyle of new generation. Sravya (Tapsee) is an NRI girl who
stays in her father’s friend Captain Rao’s house. She is in India to do
documentary on traditional Telugu music. Balu acts as a local guide to
her and in the process, they fall in love. Captain Rao doesn’t like
them fall in love. The rest of the story is all about Captain Rao’s
restrictions and how the lovers emerge unscathed.
Manoj Manchu: Manoj Manchu comes up with another rocking
performance in this movie. His styling and dialogue delivery is more
like of those characters we see in comic books and video games that are
developing using comic books. His performance in the confrontation
scene leading to interval is good. He matched the screen presense and
comedy timing of Mohan Babu in the scenes involving both of them.
Tapsee: K Raghavendra Rao gives Telugu film industry
another commercial heroine in the form of Tapsee. She has good camera
friendly looks and reminded me of Rambha in many ways. She is
effervescent and bubbly. She is good at acting too. It is no wonder
that she grabbed many projects before the release of her first movie.
She is going to be a good glamorous heroine in Telugu. It is up to her
to choose right projects to make herself a performing actress too.
Others: Mohan Babu plays the third most important
character in the film. It is nice of Mohan Babu to allow others
(including comedians) to have satires on him (especially ‘I appreciate
you’ dialogue). He is comical most of the time and performed with
extreme passion in intense scenes. Brahmanandam entertains though his
comedy is of old-fashioned type. Ali is humorous as ‘naa name ranjith.
Naa game encounter’. MS Narayana is extremely funny as the sidekick of
Mohan Babu. Suman, Dharmavarapu, Apoorva, Sudha, Ahuti Prasad and
Aishwarya are adequate. Tanikella Bharani is powerful in a small role. Story-Screenplay-Direction: The basic story given by Bhupati
Raja is simple. K Raghavendra Rao handled this simple story in a
simplistic way by including adequate commercial elements so that it
reaches everybody. Screenplay of the movie is adequate. K Raghavendra
Rao proves that there is no retirement for creativity and age never
becomes a disadvantage while dealing with romantic subjects. He has
shown the heroine Tapsee in the most glamorous way. He also made sure
that there is something in the film for A/B/C center audiences. There
are a few old-fashioned scenes for the sake of commercial elements. But
they are minimal and they don’t disturb the flow of the narration.
There is trademark of K Raghavendra Rao in songs picturization of the
movie.
Other Departments: Music by MM Keeravani is good and
background music is also handled well. I rate the 3rd song (shot in
Kerala) as the best song in the movie. The last song (desamante
Mattikadoi) is the life of the movie. All songs are picturized
colourfully. Cinematography by S Gopal Reddy is very good. However, he
should have shot stunt sequences in a better way. Dialogues by
Rajasimha are good. Editing by Marthand K Venkatesh is smooth. Art
direction by Raghu is neat. Production values by debutant producer
Lakshmi Manchu are very good with rich visuals.
Analysis: First half of the movie is nice. Tempo goes
down in the second half a bit. The climax song makes it up for all.
Plus points of the film are main leads (Manoj’s comedy and Tapsee’s
glamour) and K Raghavendra Rao’s commercial elements coupled with
attractive music/visuals. On the flip side, old-fashioned story might
not be liked by urbane crowds. On a whole, Jhummandi Naadam is a film
that has something for every kind of audience (A, B or C). It is a K
Raghavendra Rao's masala entertainer that has all ingredients do well
at box office.
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