Guntur Kaaram Review

I was expecting to get my face ripped off by the heat of Guntur Kaaram, but this one is mild mirapakaya from director Trivikram. The protagonist, Ramana (Mahesh Babu), is abandoned as a teen by his mother Vasundhara (Ramya Krishna) and grandfather (Prakash Raj). Vasundhara, leaving behind Ramana and her husband, remarries, focusing on grooming her second son to inherit the political legacy she shares with her father. Raised by his aunt (portrayed with effervescent humour by Eeswari Rao) at their family's mirchi yard in Guntur, Ramana grows up with a mommy-shaped hole in his heart. For years, Ramana's desire to reconnect with his mother is met with coldness, and then one day she decides to disown him.

There is such heavy emotionality in the premise, but you wouldn't know it from the way Trivikram treats it. It is all a bit of a joke, and Ramana is the lead comic. In the entry scene, when Ramana is asked to formally end his claim to the family name, he reacts by basically throwing a tantrum. He topples the bunting at his grandfather's birthday celebration and rampages through the gathering. The obvious trauma behind his abandonment is condensed into a few lines and glimpses.

There are parallels one might draw to Athadu (2005) to gauge how much Trivikram's style may have changed over the years. In Athadu, too, Mahesh plays a young man craving a real family. But Trivikram was not afraid to have him sit with his angst in that iconic lakeside scene when he confesses his real identity to a friend. Guntur Kaaram has a similar lakeside scene, but it is a fleeting moment that barely registers. Almost all the emotionality is crowded out by jokes, shown in quick flashbacks, or delayed until the floppy finale.

The mirchi yard angle is all about adding colour to the visuals, not so much about the spiciness and drama the setting inspires. Trivikram is meticulous about explaining why a song or fight is coming up, but forgets he still has a family drama to get through. By the interval Ramana has made four trips to try to confront his mother, but the story has not moved an inch as he gets caught up in a flirtation with Ammu (Sreeleela). Their romance easily betrays their generational gap. She is an Insta influencer, drinks like a horse, and dances with insane energy. He is amused by her and asks curious questions about her ripped jeans in exactly the way my mother does.

Mahesh Babu emerges as the MVP of this diluted mass film, keeping it afloat not just with his Korean popstar looks, but with a killer comedic timing and a proper Guntur accent. Sreeleela does the pouty, "young girl falling for an older man" thing in the only way she can: by looking stunning and by dancing like she has been possessed. Rao Ramesh is there for literally one scene, but delivers the funniest line of the movie.

The reason Guntur Kaaram is a weaksauce film despite the performances, or the visuals (gorgeously colourgraded), or the songs (Kurchi Madathapetti is a riot), is because it loses its plot for the more than half the film and then hastily picks it up again in the end. Just take Meenakshi Chaudhary's character for example: she plays Ramana's maradhalu, but she does nothing apart from running errands like a maid servant before simply disappearing without a trace. One the movie's key storylines, about Vasundhara's father's manipulation and mind games, gets a cursory one-scene treatment that trivialises the entire conflict. Guntur Kaaram is deeply unserious about its premise.

Certain expectations were set the red-hot title, but the heat barely registers on the Scolville scale. It is instead a comedy film - not a drama, and not a typical action-mass film either. It is much more entertaining if you judge it as such.