Tejam Review

Tejam is the story of a bunch of youngsters whose neighbour gets pushed off from the top of a building by her lover, and for whose operation they steal money from their local politician.

One thing worse than narrating a 34-word story in 2.5 hours is using 10 newcomers to do it, with a 15-minute interval somewhere in between. Tejam is even more painful - it has 50 newcomers, and so little happens in the movie that the whole duration seems like a 2.5 hour interval.

The story goes like this. Sowmya is a kind girl, who tops her college, gets admitted to an American university, and has a wider range of expressions than 98% of the cast put together. No wonder she's admired, loved and respected by everyone around her. Especially by her neighbours, a dozen loafers from different walks of life, to whom she sends home-cooked food everyday - they're protective of her as well.

One day, Sowmya is pushed from a building by a psycho who keeps asking her to marry him. Her parents need Rs. 70 lakhs to save her life, but can't afford it. Sowmya's friends argue with the doctor, who promptly kicks them out. They approach a women's organization and a politician for the money, but to no avail. They then decide to find the someone somewhere who's born with that kind of money. Unfortunately, no one tells them we were not born with that kind of patience.

Tejam seems to have been made on such a low budget that we doubt if we're allowed to call it a movie. The dialogues seem like someone put them together in about 10 seconds each. The script seems like it was written by someone who didn't want to read what he wrote.

Some of the performances are so atrocious - you can see a few actors simply not willing to wear any expression on their faces while talking, and some starting to giggle half-way through their sentences - members of the cast must have been pretty sure this movie won't release in a place where people know them.

The heroine has done a good job, though, and so have the actors playing the parents. M S Narayana and Brahmanandam make indifferent 2-minute appearances. Preeti Jhangiani has an item song that was shot in a popular pub, but for people to stick around long enough to watch that, they need to play this movie backwards.

The visuals could be easily shot by your 2-year-old nephew using your mobile phone when you aren't looking. The music, too, seems like it can be easily composed by him. Surprisingly, the makers have managed to rope in S P Balasubrahmaniam and Chitra for a few songs. We sure hope they used body doubles to enter the studios of this one.

Watch it if you must, but keep the incident to yourself.