Chanti Review

A bus screeches to a halt. The conductor along with a few other passengers alights, and the front-benchers in the cinema hall begin the whistling. Volume is turned to HIGH and music reaches a melodious crescendo. Enter Charmy, stupid!!! She is Vasantha Lakshmi, the village belle who just walked out of the sets of Sri Anjaneyam and has a tremendous crush on our protagonist.

Chanti (Ravi Teja) is the man of the village. Correction - he is THE man of the village. With friendly smiles and sleeveless shirts, he roams the streets to win the hearts of all. Personal hygiene out on a holiday, we could say.

Another one of the loud-mouthed, navel-blazing, Chanti-loving species is Anjali (Anjali). She and Lakshmi keep vying for Chanti's attention while the movie keeps vying for ours. Neither succeed.

The last of the significant characters in the movie is the village MLA played by Atul Kulkarni. This man's sole desire is to buy a 5-acre plot of land owned by Chanti that will make way for his devious plan that will, in short, take him to Chief Ministerial berth.

In a fitting climax, Chanti revives his unexplored military training to punish the guilty. What of everything else? Well, the titles appear before any question is to be answered. This movie has so many complications, so many equations, so much characterization, so much said between the lines. Oh, when will the woes of the hapless audience end?

Ravi Teja once again runs the show. Nothing much has changed about him since his Idiot days. Girls still fall for his hairy chest. He can still beat the pulp out of the baddies, and hell, yeah, he can still play to the galleries like no one else.

So what exactly should one expect from this flick? Zip. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. That's because those who read these reviews are predominantly an urban audience who have different needs. Ravi Teja, on the other hands, caters to the needs of a different section. By rudimentary statistics, you (the reader) might hardly feel the need to risk such a venture.

And that's because you might find it very tough to understand why people scream out their hero's name or why they throw paper pieces each time they see his face or why dialogues like "Kavalante ikkade, ippude neetho shobhanam chesta!" (translator refuses to translate) have people on the floor while you cringe in disbelief. Chanti is best left to the fun-loving bunch out in the front rows. However, all the front-benchers of Andhra Pradesh will find it very difficult to put this mess of a movie together again.