Seemasimham Review

Halfway through your suffering Seemasimham, these are your key findings:

1. Balakrishna is now so "big" that several other objects are actually orbiting around him, in the form of similarly proportioned people.
2. Raghuvaran's playback duties appear to have been done by a grisly bear in sexual agony.
3. The makeup unit of the flick strongly believes that beauty is from within, and hence doesn't mind everybody looking like the kith and kin of King Kong.
4. You still have an entire half of the movie to decide whether you've seen every appalling thing ever.

If you are earnest, there are other things you can learn, too. Take this, for example. "Meere kaadu, gadda pai yevvaru anna ani pilichina palukutha. Andaru na chellelle," reassures Balakrishna after he's just cleaned up an entire police station for misbehaving with women. Just a few blinks later, he's singing "Rendu jella paapa, renugunta chepa, raathirela kostava?" with Reema Sen, who he's not even intending to marry. That shows responsibility - a real hero sets examples continuously. Okay, so maybe they are a little inconsistent, but do you wear the same clothes everyday, you nitpicking conditioned-to-carp hypocrite?

Seema Simham is unadulterated crap, made strictly for people who love seeing disagreements being settled through an analysis that goes right down to the point - of a sword. Dhananjaya (Raghuvaran) hires Durga Prasad (Balakrishna) to avenge the indirect murder of his (Dhananjaya's) son by Chandrasekhar, Dhananjaya's best friend once and a staunch enemy now. The plan is to locate the missing child of Chandrasekhar and slay him to settle the score.

Shortly after this, Dhananjaya's wife yells and faints of malignant throat cancer, and the doctor suggests euthanasia. But yelling and fainting are the indications of trauma, and if that can lead to mercy killing, then we'd beg the doc for the fatal injection ourselves, more so as Durga's Ayurvedic resources coupled with his Kali pooja bring her back from that coma.

Charulata (Reema Sen), the niece of Dhananjaya, is now dying to marry Durga, but her mother Chamundeshwari (Sakuntala) resents this. Her vengeful hatred for him is based in a flashback that's so fresh, its original writer owes Adam 5 bucks.

The second half shows Durga rampaging through the villainous family of Chamundeshwari. He's an SP, so he puts some baddies behind bars and a lot many behind tombstones. But in the process he has a plough plummeting into his right hand, which therefore gets immobilized. His fiancé, Hema (Simran), selflessly helps his hand (that doesn't even depict a Handyplast, let alone a Plaster Of Paris cast) to heal. And he dances a lot with her to return the favor.

Back into reality (?) - the main story (???) is really smoking now. Dhanajay finds out that Durga hadn't actually killed the son of Chandrasekhar since Durga himself is that elusive son. What? The guy who pretends to get killed is the foster brother (Sai Kumar) of Durga, who himself is the foster son of Vishwanath. The scriptwriter successfully confuses us into a state wherein we cannot tell if the movie is going towards the end or the beginning, even after being given two chances.

All of a sudden Dhananjay's age old thirst for revenge vanishes. Chamundeshwari, though, is still hung up on killing our hero for badmouthing her family (more than anything else). The climax is some corny dishum-dishum rubbish that we thought filmmakers had left way behind in the late eighties. The vamp finally dies after throwing some grenades and in the process accidentally swallowing one.

The Paruchuri brothers come up with hair-rising dialogues like "Thaadu kaadu ra, molathaadu tho uri theesta", but Balayya's wig takes away all our unworthy attention. The movie has all the navarasaalu multiplied 90 times over with 900.The only good part is an amazingly choreographed number called Pori Husharu.

Don't get conned, this is not a sequel to Balakrishna's other 'simham' hits, since this one here has nothing to do with borders or lions. The director is the type to drown himself in a carpool and he made the flick for likeminded people.