Sravanamasam Review

Last year's tensest moment was before the announcement of the Best Actor in the Cine 'Maa' awards. This was followed by a truly amazing display of intra-industry respect/camaraderie when NTR Jr and Mahesh Babu shared the award since their movies were the best movies of the year in question.

There is no better idea, at this moment, in the Telugu film industry than to have a movie starring both of the two. Next best is to get the fathers of both of them and make a movie with them. That could work, too.

Hari Krishna and Krishna are still riding high over the successes of movies released 5 years ago and are being very very choosy about the kind of movies they choose. Krishna is trying to increase his cult following by not dancing around with actresses half his age accompanied by no less than 45 junior dancers in a setting filled with so much color that you suddenly wish were color blind. Hari Krishna too is trying not to do any more roles where he's a successful farmer with so much time on his hand that he finds time to start agricultural revolutions and dance around trees with actresses, yes, half his age.

So they simply take up roles where they're the parents of actors who do the aforementioned sequences.

The story of the movie? Two words - Wedding Season. So we have the usual family bonding, with the special ingredient of property fights, jealous villains' sons and funny wedding organizers thrown in. This is what the director (who is incidentally the producer and scriptwriter as well) has to say about the movie: "Sravanamasam is a film of my taste. I can confidently say that I am better than 90% of film directors and 80% of dialogue writers of the present generation. This film is a clean family entertainer with no obscenity. Not a single scene of this film was reshot." Bravo Mr. Posani Krishna Murali.

The one song featuring Gazala who's fantasizing about her lover is the only one that is truly well shot. No sarcasm there. Another song featuring her makes you want to buy yourself a pirated CD so you can watch it in the privacy of your bedroom, but the next song featuring a really large Keerti Chawla makes you want to swear to never buy a CD again.

The rest of the Vande Mataram Srinivas songs are reminiscent of the old lovable Srikanth flick Pelli Sandadi. The hero of Sravanamasam, Karthikeya, is apparently from a very poor family. Probably the director is making everybody know that so that he has a "sympathy wave" in his favor. Did I mention that the movie also stars Kalyani and Jyothi? Who's feeling sorry for Karthikeya now?

To be fair to the movie, there are a few scenes where Hari Krishna and Krishna share fantastic screen chemistry. Krishna also shares some good chemistry with Vijaya Nirmala and a much larger Bhanupriya. Hail Cult Hero Superstar Krishna. I did miss his hands-in-trouser-pockets dance sequences though.

If the number of heroines isn't inspiration enough to watch the movie, maybe the gold being given away to lucky viewers is. To find out more about that, watch the film.