Mesthri Review

Forget censorship, what we need today is a board that will keep movie-makers from going into production with atrocious scripts. That's exactly what we need – to narrow the funnel at the beginning. Put the ream of paper in the shredder the minute it starts sounding outrageous – take the courage and just do it! And save us screaming torture like Mesthri.

Mesthri (Shashikanth) is exactly that – a mason. And he is a mason with a cause. Bachchan's Coolie is now a loud-mouthed propagandist and a fighter for social causes. Like better cement and rust-free iron rods at building sites. And clean drinking water in slums that have been deprived of it by Bisleri's callous depletion of ground water. And Neha Oberoi, his love interest, is the slum-dweller with sun-blocked complexion, highlighted hair, Gladrags supermodel make-up and citrus colored half-saris. She also carries bricks and cement on the site, between handling her diet and beauty regime.

Poonam plays a girl studying at Villa Marie, who falls in love with Shashikanth after throwing stones up his dhoti while he working on the construction, and then loses at a dare posed by him to prove that college-girls are inferior to construction girls.

Venu Madhav is the winner of the shouting match in this movie, with his so-called comic role. He plays a drunk courting a raunchily dressed coconut seller, and screams louder as his jokes get coarser and unfunnier.

Now Mesthri's enemies are a consortium of politicians, builders, their sidekick jesters and the wives of all of the aforementioned. He moves from omnipotence to omnipotence (there is no better way to describe what he does), as he systematically sabotages every one of the sleazy plans of this consortium. His avatar for carrying out this grand plan is Balram. Oh yes, we forgot, his actual name is Ram, not Mesthri of course. It's just super-cool to call him that – stone-masonry is the hottest new job with today's generation.

So the Balram avatar dons power-suits and plants bombs under the feet of his foes, as he threatens them on phone. When confronted, he delivers rousing speeches at banned decibel levels, about the power of the Mesthri and what it can do to jackals like the villians. Sometimes the police gets hold of him too, after getting hold of computer-generated alias images of Balram that look a lot like Ram. At times like this, Ram protests and pleads innocence so he can get out and continue playing Robin Hood.

How does it all end? Well – not many people will know since they have left the theater by then. And as for us, we are blessedly not allowed spoilers. So if you have been getting some weird, forceful masochistic urges for some time now, Mesthri is the best place to look for a diagnosis. If you can sit through this movie, you are definitely IT. If you can't, you are normal, but then we suggest you don't try it at all.