Jayam Manadera Review

It's always the same story. In all pre-release interviews and hoopla the hero says that this is his most challenging role to date, the heroine says that it's given immense satisfaction to work on such a great script and with such superb co-stars and crew, and the director says that it's a totally new theme. And when you go to the theater, it's all the same. The hero plays the same pranks to woo the heroine, they sing to the same choreographed dance sequences, the same revenge drama follows the love drama albeit in different settings, there are the same swish-swashing mannerisms while mouthing powerful dialogues, and the stunt choreography is all the same. There you have Jayam Manadera.

As usual, the plot starts with the hero Venkatesh singing his solo song spreading the message of happiness around. The song over, the NRI in London becomes a tour guide to a bunch of Indian winners of the European tour sponsored by Thums Up. The heroine Soundarya is of course one of them, and the hero who loses his heart out to the Indian lass takes extra interest in making the tourists perfectly at home. Singing songs with them and partaking in their comic capers, Venkatesh wins their hearts.

But being the heroine, Soundarya is not one to give in easily to Venkatesh's pranks. But circumstances like the heroine getting lost in the train and the hero staying back to take her back to her group (now where did you see that before?) pave the way for their coming together. By interval time they become good friends and, naturally, lovers. And now it's time for Venkatesh to become a superhero, so the film loses whatever good feel it has got so far in a gory cauldron of wholly unnecessary violence.

When our NRI lands in India to see his beloved, he is chased and shot at by a gang of sharpshooters unknown to him. Thanks to a group of diehard followers of his dead father (Venkatesh again) he is saved, but only to be drawn deeper and deeper into the murky world of violence. It is time for the viewers to know who exactly this Senior Venkatesh is, and so we are treated to the story of his reformer father who fought for the equality of all castes in the Palnadu region, and for which he paid with his life.

Venkatesh seeks revenge on his father's detractors and sees to it that they too die a violent death like his father did. There is nothing original in the film sans the get-up of the senior Venkatesh. His role was etched out well, and there is pindrop silence in the theaters for half an hour when he takes charge. His dialogues and the locations in Rayalaseema, where the action takes place, manage to capture your attention. And that's it. From there on the film is a yawning bore. Events happen too fast and too many collisions of junior Venkatesh with the villains numb you by the time you leave the theater.

In the first half of the film you are treated to some of the exotic locations as part of the European tour - Eiffel tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the lake city of Venice. If the novelty value still hasn't worn off for you (shucks, every other film is in Europe or Australia these days) you can go, but like we said, it's the same stuff narrated in the same old way.