Nuvvante Naakishtam Review

Every once in a while, you have a great time laughing your heart out in a movie theater. In Nuvvante Naakishtam, it happens when you see the Maa TV anchor in the theater's lobby reporting about how people are raving about this film. Sure, Nuvvante Naakishtam is better than your expectations, but that's because you go to an EVV film with either no expectations or lesser, whichever your astrologer suggests. But saying that people are raving about it is taking people, raving, about and it too far.

Anyway, the film starts with Vijay (Aryan Rajesh), a software engineer in the US, deciding that he wants to marry a nice traditional Telugu girl, since his grandmother Manikyam (Ramaprabha) tells him that they are easy to maintain and just need to be stored in a dry place. So he lands up at Nidadavolu to check out Radha (Anu Mehta), and immediately falls in love with her.

However Radha is in love with Devudu (Aryan Naresh), who's gone to earn money to impress her dad and win her hand in marriage, and will return a year later. Vijay suggests to her that with him she can skip this step since he already has enough money to impress her dad, and besides, they can't possibly let the movie go on for that long. However, she is adamant.

In the meantime, Radha's dad (Suman) informs her that Devudu is dead. This comes as a surprise to Radha, since she didn't think making money was so tough. She's shattered and decides to kill herself, but Vijay stops her telling her that if everybody killed himself, there would be nobody left. She agrees with the logic, and decides to live on.

In the meantime, Devudu returns from Singapore - no, it's not that you go there after you die, silly; he just didn't die as reported. Anyway, he runs into Vijay who's on his way to Nidadavolu to try his luck with Radha again. He realizes that Vijay is totally in love with Radha, and decides to sacrifice his love (Gita 3:14) so he can move on to other things.

So he disguises himself as a Sardar and lands up with Vijay at Radha's place to convince her that Vijay is indeed the best husband she can get, or at least a member of the opposite sex. The rest of the film deals with how they end it all.

The best parts of Nuvvante Naakishtam are the parallel comedy tracks involving Krishna Bhagavan, L B Sriram, AVS, Lakshmipathy etc. - there is some hilarious stuff there, and salvages this one's rating. For example, when L B Sriram is asked if he has his dad's photograph for a ceremony, he says he doesn't have a photograph, but has an X-ray. Krishna Bhagavan as a philandering husband and L B Sriram as a water-seller are the highlights of this film, and make it watchable.

Aryan (Allari) Naresh is one of the better actors of the young brigade, and his role brings to the forefront the rather insipid main theme. Aryan Rajesh passes muster, too, though his role is almost in parentheses. Anu Mehta is pretty okay for a Telugu film heroine, most of whom look like they cannot count the fingers on their hands and come up with the same number twice.

A couple of songs are tolerable, but the music on the whole isn't something you'd mention in your résumé as your favorite. Some parts of the film are shot in Singapore, and it has a decent look. On the whole, worth a watch if you have a specific requirement for getting tickled in spurts.