Sasirekha Parinayam Review

A girl running away from a marriage can lead to severe trauma for the groom. And if she is the bride, it will even seem normal. In the case of Sasirekha (Genelia), however, the groom's diabolic family cares more for the dowry than for the bride, and you are in general relieved.

The runaway bride, however, hardly is. Her powerful family is chasing her all over Rajahmundry, she has no place to hide, and when things get impossible to handle and she sees the inviting waters of the Godavari on one side and a cruel abusive marriage for a lifetime on the other, she does just what any other desperate girl in that situation would do - she gets onto a launch to cross the river.

Okay, you cruel sadist, she jumps into the river, too - but that is when she is unable to bear the pestering of Anand (Tarun), a guy who briefly helped her in her running away, but who is not leaving her alone now. Anand jumps in right after her, and makes a surprising discovery - that swimming doesn't come naturally, you need to have learnt it. He is rescued, but Sasirekha isn't - she doesn't need to be, since she can swim.

Anyway, they run into each other again, and start to travel to Hyderabad together. Sasirekha has her reasons to follow Anand - she's broke. Anand has his reasons to follow Sasirekha - he's in love with her. You have your reasons to follow the movie - it's engrossing, and the other options this week are Mental Krishna, Indumati and Mahanagaramlo, each of which will make the others look like masterpieces.

Trying to find logic errors in Sasirekha Parinayam is like trying to chop off the branch you are sitting on - if you are going to be so nit-picking, you'll be left with no movies to watch. Still, the film is choc-a-bloc with them - for example, Sasirekha looks quite excited when Anand tells her that he is in love with someone else, though she later says she fell in love with him much earlier than that. And Anand appears irrationally dense when Sasi is obviously jealous of another girl he's getting close to, though he's figured out earlier that she indeed is.

Yet, the movie chugs along unselfconsciously, enjoying itself while it lasts. Genelia, back on the Telugu screen after almost a year (Mr. Medhavi was the last), is effervescent as ever, while Tarun, down on his luck for as long as anyone can remember, finds a welcome saviour in Krishna Vamsi, who himself is back on a roll.

Ahuti Prasad, the delight of Chandamama, rocks with his lines again here, with plenty of unparliamentary Krishna and Godavari district words dissolving into the pace of the delivery. Raghubabu starts off appearing to sound different from what he usually does, but it fails to make any impact eventually.

Much like Vamsi's earlier hit Chandamama, Sasirekha Parinayam also spends a lot of time in interior Andhra, warming the cockles of natives with copious visuals of paddy fields and the Godavari banks, and all the local lingo. The music by Manisarma and Vidyasagar is backed by more lyrical richness than you are used to, and is almost an end in itself.

Sasirekha Parinayam is a fully recommended weekend outing for the entire family, and is a good reward for successfully clearing the metal detector test.