Kuberulu Review

The Kuberulu are not cheats, they're not thieves, and in the end they're not even getting all that treasure (which, by the way, is nothing but the jewel collection of the Nizam himself). Someone else cheats the men, someone else steals the jewels, and someone else (namely, the government) gets the fortune. What, then, is the movie about?

A Mumbai goon single-handedly steals a chest of the Nizam's jewels from the policemen who're accompanying it from somewhere to somewhere else in a police van, at 2am, and just before the fatal police shootout in which he's killed, he buries the loot underground, photographing the place with his mobile phone.

Somewhere on the banks of the Godavari lives Junior YSR (Sivaji) - Yarlagadda Sivaram - who wants to be president of his village, and talks, walks, waves and dresses like YSR. About 25 minutes into the premise, the script-writers suffer from convulsions of guilt, decide they're taking the joke too far, and quit the mimicry. And they weren't even ridiculing the man. Trust us when we say that it's the worst thing that happens to Kuberulu.

Sivaram loses the election, ends up broke along with his friend (Ali), and the 2 of them land in the city in search of some big money, and bump into another friend (Krishna Bhagwan) - and these 3 are the Kuberulu the film's talking about. What follows is nothing you've not seen before - the 3 just go on a treasure hunt. So they loudly share a room in Vivekananda Colony, dance at loud item songs, have loud encounters with many loud people, and the jewels head for a loud climax (optimistic readers, please substitute 'funny' for 'loud' in the above sentence).

The robbery, as well as the YSR track, raise expectations from the film. Sure, there are a few regular plug-ins - a fake sanyasi, a villain, an over-the-top neighbourhood bully (Sakuntala). But a lot of the jokes aren't working - it was probably not a good idea to keep the one on the tiffin-carrier-bomb right now, and the blood donation joke was far from satirical.

The performances are actually good, and the first half is pretty funny. Sivaji's YSR impersonation is pretty brilliant stuff. Even Ali has his take on Chandrababu Naidu. All the actors are genuinely trying to have fun and be funny, but the dialogues and the very elementary sequences let them down. Farzana has an okay role, but not much in the way of comedy.

The songs are jarring, mostly consisting of over-buxom women jiggling their stuff in what look like zari swimsuits. It's a racket of a film, and there comes a moment when all that's happening on screen is people hanging out of jeeps and screaming all over, and the audience doesn't feel like laughing, suffering from noise-fatigue as it is.

Maybe CM garu is amused, maybe he isn't. But Kuberulu isn't great comedy. We'd have recommended it as a simple de-stresser, but you'd need to carry ear-plugs in order to let it de-stress you, which is so not the point.