Katti Kantarao Review

We could rant about how there is a part of the Telugu cinema industry that continues to make money off crassness. We could rant about how talent-treasures like Kota Srinivasa Rao and Allari Naresh are badly underutilized.

We could rant about how - in making half-naked women perform crude dances in vulgar bachelor-party item songs, while basing half a film on a foul-mouthed "society" bitching about how a woman can sleep with her lover before marriage - some of our filmmakers don't know the first thing about differentiating between prudishness and hypocrisy.

But we won't rant about any of that. Because these filmmakers aren't going to expand their horizons in a hurry. Because there are so few options for truly good comedies (heck, truly good cinema), thanks to which offerings like Katti Kantha Rao - even if they contain insane levels of inappropriateness - are among the only excuses that Hyderabad has for "wholesome" family outings.

Katti Kantha Rao starts off all right, actually. It is the story about how Kantha Rao (Allari Naresh) gets things done only by the process of hoodwinking and manipulation. His major pain points in life are his sisters' greedy husbands (Krishna Bhagawan and Srinivas Reddy), and his familial responsibilities of getting his 2 other sisters married.

Meanwhile he has a secret girlfriend (Kamna Jethmalani), whom he cannot marry until he fulfils a bizarre contract that his dad (Dharmavarapu Subrahamanyam) had gotten him to sign in the past. Then, there is the heroine's father (Kota Srinivasa Rao), an aspiring village president who is pitched against an evil rival (Ahuti Prasad). How Kantha Rao gets past these hurdles to marry his woman is what the plot is all about.

The jokes maintain the mood of no-fuss silliness all through, with a few genuinely brilliant moments sparkling at times (for example, the pellichoopulu scene). Aided by a cast that is visibly having fun with the nonsense - with Allari Naresh and Kota Srinivasa Rao standing out for some sheer craftsmanship - the lightheadedness is quite infectious, even if not very intelligent.

However, there is plenty of unpleasant melodrama towards the end, that harks back to the days of some of the adult-themed comedies of '90s, wherein issues like a woman's ("soiled") virginity used to be discussed with as much prudence as one would talk about the weather. The movie is unlike a recent, much more funnier, and much cleaner, offering by the same team.

Basically, it's a formula EVV-Naresh offering, with production values that are only a bit higher than elementary. The effects of the comedy last about as long as the jokes in a joke book you pick up from a store on a railway platform, and each actor has a maximum of a few LOLs written for him (except for Kota and Naresh, of course). A few yawns and some rounds of looking at your watch later, they all wind up. The song-and-dance routines serve to extend the run time of the flick.

On the whole, you could watch this movie and forget about it, but the more discerning may also want to jump directly to step 2 of that process.