Sampangi Review

The caption says it's a pure love story - and wonder of wonders, it is! Indeed, it's tough to believe that this came from the same man who gave Bachelors and started a hugely deplorable trend of tasteless semi-porn flicks in Tollywood. We hope this one sets a trend as well among all his "followers" - it will be a pretty desirable one in that the film is clean.

Sampangi is a very straightforward story (thankfully!) of two persons falling in love. It only gets on your nerves a little for the simple fact that its hero absolutely refuses to tell anyone of his love for the girl, that including the girl. We suppose Yadi Reddy had his reasons for this - it would have been a really, really short movie if the hero did, because nobody has any objection whatsoever to the marriage! That is why you tend to spend a lot of the time wanting to bop the hero on his head and tell him to confess.

Shankarnarayan and Osman have been great friends since childhood. Osman's elder daughter is now getting married and Shankar's entire family troops over to Hyderabad for the wedding. To cut a loooong story short, Shankar's son Abhishek and Osman's bubbly younger daughter Salwar Rizwana meet and fall in love. Full points for originality - only Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge and a hundred other movies after that used this theme. But wait, things aren't too terribly clichéd.

The problem is that neither wants to confess love for the other because each is waiting for the other to say something. The story progresses in the wedding scenario, and it's time to say goodbye. Right about now, you look at your watch and wait for the interval...and some twist, please. It happens. Shankar has a kidney failure, and after some drama, Osman donates his.

After this, Abhi decides that a rejection of his desire to marry Rizwana, if it happened, would drive a rift into the friendship of the parents, and so decides that he will not follow up on his romance, even while all his friends are telling him that that's not the way to go.

Rizwana even comes to his place to write an exam (though why anyone would need to go from Hyderabad to Vizag for an exam is beyond me), but Abhi treats her quite indifferently and she's obviously disappointed. New twist - Rizwana's marriage is fixed. And the pace of narration now picks up leading to a good though rather senti climax.

The communal card of Hindu-Muslim marriages is played just enough so as to not become too corny. The lead pair looks good onscreen. Kanchi Kaul is really cute and might just steal your heart a la Bhoomika in Kushi. Deepak acquits himself pretty creditably in his debut film and he's good looking (if a little wooden-faced) to boot. The direction is good and so is the music.

The song-and-dance routine doesn't pop up every five minutes to bug you and that is one of the strengths of this film - every thing in its own time. A good family movie, despite a rather clichéd overall theme.