Andagaadu Review

It can be a very bad experience to be in a gruesome accident and emerge completely disfigured. Sagar (Rajendra Prasad) is lucky - he is disfigured by birth. That, however, doesn't stop him from fooling around with his heroines in the songs.

That's perhaps the tragedy of Andagaadu - that an overweight, ageing actor seems to now be making movies primarily since movies can have raunchy duets, and those are nice to act in. It's not even being cleverly handled - it's blatant. People don't go to Rajendra Prasad's films to see raunchy songs, and he knows that. If that was cut out, this would actually be a good film.

Anyway, Sagar cannot get married since it's hard to get women to do anything these days, forget marry you. Plus, his face doesn't launch a thousand ships, even when they're all looking the other way. In desperation, he decides that he'll seduce a ghost - who better to understand that beauty is only skin-deep, than those with no skin at all?

So he gets himself a copy of "The Beginner's Guide To Seducing Ghosts In 3, 6, 12, 24, 48 Or 96 Simple Steps, Depending On How Dumb You Are, You Hopeless $#@*^!", and starts the rituals to propitiate horny spirits. As he is doing that, however, Rekha (Damini), a girl who's proactively run away from home, secretly lands in his apartment and, noticing his healthy enthusiasm to chat up some wraiths, decides to indulge him by posing as one herself.

She plays with him for a short while, spiritedly using his home and ordering him about. However, soon he finds out that this is no ghost but just a close substitute. But if you are with us still, apart from being a complete loser, you'll also know that a ghost was only his second option. So he tells her that she can feel free to hide in his apartment until her problem gets solved, whichever happens earlier. If you read the previous sentence again, good, you are with us.

Anyway, life goes on, and soon we reach the climax, where Rekha tells Sagar that she is already in love with some guy who hasn't yet seen this film, and so hasn't witnessed the grinding duets that she's sung with Sagar. That breaks Sagar's heart. No, not the fact that that guy hasn't seen the duets, but the fact that it's already the climax. To know what happens next, you'd have to pay us.

The film is actually some kind of a fantasy that almost every man has wished for in his teens/youth - getting stuck with a beautiful girl in the same house for several days. Only, you can't see Rajendra Prasad living it out - he looks old enough to be her Dad. Plus, there should've been a lot more time spent with that situation - the actual interaction starts in the second half, and lasts barely a half-hour. The film would've been better if a lot more of it dealt with the relationship slowly blossoming. Instead, you have a first half the bores you.

Damini is a good find, and the pity is she enters very late in the film. The comedy track involving M S Narayana is one-tracked, and Venu Madhav is under-utilized. The songs, we've already dwelt upon - they seem made with one objective.

Considering what else is showing right now, this may just be worth a watch.