Dreams (2002) Review

I met the cast members! I met the cast members! Only, they look as hopeless face-to-face as they do in the movie. And as for the movie... according to fractal geometry, the bigger picture looks the same as the component parts. And with such actors, and of course, the rest of the crew, this movie has the chance of a Christian missionary in an Al-Qaeda stronghold.

Dreams is what the movie is called, and I asked one the actors why it is called so. He has no idea, it appears. Neither do I. And if you watch this movie as part of your regular kamikaze training program, neither will you. But Dreams it is, and Dreams it will be for whatever amount of time the theaters decide to continue with it.

The movie is set in a college that has a building comparable to the Vanenberg IT park in Hitech City. Manoj (Neeraj) and Neelima (Chandreyi Ghosh) meet and fall in love. A nut called Balaji creates trouble and eyes the heroine and does all the jazz one needs to do to convince you that he is the bad guy.

Manoj and Balaji fight during a students' strike. Balaji's friend impregnates a girl, and in the true spirit of friendship, Balaji finishes her off and frames Manoj. One broad and one birdbrain with one stone. Neelima and co. investigate and prove Manoj innocent while the guy is brooding and fuming in jail. End of story.

Shot in and around Hyderabad, with the romantic song sequences at and in Secret Lake, the budget is pretty obvious - the producer seems to have raided his son's piggy bank to make this movie. The hero and the heroine should count their lucky stars that some nut was dumb enough to let them act in a movie. The story is a direct take-off on half a dozen B-grade movies that were recently released. Brahmanandam and L B Sriram make brief appearances as college lecturers. I think they were trying to be funny. The songs seem to have been composed by some really vindictive soul.

There were whistles and catcalls right through the movie - spontaneous applause for every fight scene, for every song... for that matter, for every scene of the movie. Every person in the balcony but me was wild with enthusiasm and appreciation for the movie. Just in case you are wondering, the entire cast and crew members had turned up to see the movie. And so the first lines of the review. Care to read them again?