Rangabali Review

Pawan Basamsetti's Rangabali has as much going for it as against it. This Naga Shourya flick is yet another "yaaveraze" film - a mix of comedy, drama and action that is so completely forgettable that I have, in fact, already forgotten most of it.

Here is what I've happily forgotten. I've forgotten how Shourya showed off his rippling abs in his intro scene for no apparent reason. I've forgotten its assorted adult jokes, some of which I was clueless about in the first place, like that punchline about a man's weight going up when he ogles a girl. I mean, I know it's an erection joke, but the rational part of me refused to be amused.

I've forgotten about how I squirmed anytime Yuktha Thareja ("the heroine") or Shine Tom Chacko ("the villain") messed up their dubbing, which happened nearly every line.

Most of all, I've forgotten about the hope I felt during the first half-hour of the film when the writing seemed to have a touch of buoyancy and self-awareness. A protagonist who is a reckless youth, who spends his days diving into town fights while getting chewed out by his working-class father, is not the most original. But Goparaju Ramana and Shourya share good chemistry as the adorably dysfunctional father-son duo. Between their family drama and the presence of comedian Satya who plays the hero's friend, spirits are high.

But once the love track begins, the film fades. Shourya falls in love with Sahaja (Yuktha), a junior doctor assigned to be his mentor. Their limp romance consists of a steamy song and several close-up shots of Sahaja's face. For their match to work, Shourya must do something odd: get the name of the town centre changed. Rangabali, as the centre is currently called, has a bloody history that must be recast. That's the condition under which the elders agree to their marriage. So for the rest of the story, Shourya devises all kinds of schemes to rename Rangabali, triggering the ire of the local MLA (Tom Chacko) along the way.

Rangabali is a middling watch when it sticks to comedy, even if the jokes are at times low-brow and unfunny. But it becomes a outright parody and overstays its welcome when the story takes an unfortunate turn into social messaging. One minute it's a gag - Shourya's gang dressed in jihadi costumes setting off a bomb as a joke - and in the next it's a lecture on how our modern minds have become corrupted by the media.

I sometimes joke that writing Telugu cinema reviews these days is about coming up with creative ways to say "earnest acting, rotten story". While Rangabali doesn't launch into an action sequence every chance it gets, and attempts a more creative finale, the writing is still stale.

As for the performances, "earnest" is indeed the right word for Shourya, who gives it all he's got, including with his West Godavari accent. But it is Satya that carries the weight of the movie. Tom Chacko cuts a formidable figure as the villain, but he simply refuses to get the dialogues right, fumbling his dubbing to the point of being irritating. Yuktha is, in a word, an amateur - a young North Indian import who is only cast to look pretty, say some dull lines without moving a single facial muscle, and pump her chest in steamy songs in distinctly crass ways.

The mixed bag of performances, the middling script, the humour that lands only sometimes... all these positives and negatives add up to a movie that is, even in mathematically terms, average. I mean, in Godavari slang, "yaaverze".