MANORAMA (2009) Review by Bharatstudent.com

Movie: Manorama
Rating : 1/5
Banner : ZEE Motion Pictures
Cast : Charmi, Nishan, Sridhar Rao, Pradeep, Lahari, Sunayana, Srivastav, Ali, MS, Narsing Yadav and Others
Cinematography : Jagan
Music : Koti
Producer: Zee Group
Director: V Eswar Reddy
Released Date: March 27, 2009

Story:
A tale without meaning, the story begins with Gitanjali a k a Gilli (Charmi) who comes to Hyderabad to spend few days with her friends (Lahari and Sridhar). She lives near Manorama café and there comes a stranger (Nishan) with a bag. His motive is to blow a bomb in the café, meanwhile Gilli is bored and wants to kill time. With her lip reading skills, she figures out from a distance that a boy is threatening to commit suicide on phone to his girlfriend. Gilli becomes the angel, also notices the number with her abilities and calls up that girl. She comes to Manorama to inform the lover boy but instead the bomber sees her and falls for her. Few twists of events happen and the bomb also fails to explode on time. Meanwhile, both the stranger and Gilli get to know each other and in no time, they fall in love with each other though they don't admit it. what happens from there forms the rest of the story.

Presentation:
The director has attempted to mix love and humanity in a matured proportion but instead it has become a mess. The narrative lacked the punch and the presentation was just average. The script was weak, the screenplay was mediocre. Music was good at places and one song is touching, cinematography did not have anything special to do. Editing was neat. Costumes and art department were apt. Charmee was her regular self and she seems to have put on some weight, Nishan was handsome and has shown potential but he needs to work more on his expressions. M S, Ali were standard. The others added their bit but nothing significant to talk about.


Conclusion:

The film takes off on a different mode in the start and ends up at a completely different note. The plot is known in just ten minutes and the pace is extremely slow as the maker was trying to fill the two and a half hour slot. While the first half goes about with the building up of the plot, a twist happens just before the interval. However, there is no momentum or exciting moments and instead the climax gets into a very depressing mode. The film could have been a lot better if there was a tight screenplay and a meaningful connection to the storyline and the characters. This is hard to succeed at the box office.

AKASAMANTHA (2009) Review by Greatandhra.com

Film: Akasamantha
Rating: 3.25/5
Cast: Prakash Raj, Aishwarya, Trisha, Ganesh, Talaivasal Vijay, Venkat Raman, Jagapathi Babu etc
Lyrics: Veturi, Ananth Sri Ram
Music: Vidya Sagar
Cinematography: Preetha
Art: Kadhir
Dialogues: Sasank Vennelakanti
Producer: Dil Raju
Story-Screenplay-Director: Radha Mohan
Released On: 27th March 2009

The title ‘Dil’ for Raju aptly fits. He has proven that once again. He rightly produced the movie that touches the ‘dil’ of audiences. Let us see how the movie touches the strings of hearts and sounds a poetic music.



Story:
The story starts with Raghuram (Prakash Raj) who jogs in a park. Sudhakar (Jagapathi Babu) spends his time with his 2 year old daughter in the same park around a tot lot. He takes an interval from that girl and sits beside Raghu Ram and both introduce each other. The conversation starts between the two with the topic of that child.

Raghu Ram starts narrating about his daughter Abhi (Trisha) to Sudhakar. He narrates his entire flash back saying about all tender feelings he had with her through out his life. He starts with the birth of Abhi and narrates till her marriage to a Sardarji (Ganesh). That’s a set of tender feelings which has to be watched on screen.



Finally after listening to the story of Raghu Ram and his feelings on his daughter, Sudhakar understands how he should make up his mind and heart with respect to his daughter. That’s the end of the film.

Performances:
Prakash Raj is at his best. He proves an artiste with mettle. He lived in the role of a loving father living in an isolated hill station.

Aishwarya is ok in her role. Trisha portrayed the role as per requirement. Ganesh grooved well in the get up of Sardarjee and justified the role. Talaivasal Vijay entertained and emotionally gripped in the role of Ravi Sastry.


Technically the film deserves full marks for cinematography. All the verdant locales of hill station are rightly captured. Music is just ok and ‘Atala patala…’ song is haunting.

Dialogues are crisp and filled with subtle humor that’s not far from natural appeal. There are no melodrama sequences any where and that gripped the attention of present day audiences.

Direction by Radha Mohan is good. The story line and narration is subtle with all elements right from message to entertainment.

Plus Points:

Emotional narration
Subtle humor
Justification

Minus:
Prakash Raj’s character is coated with excessive sympathy in some scenes.


Analysis:
The film has a message coated with entertainment and emotion. It has got message for fathers, message for daughters and message on a whole for every citizen. It shows how fathers should balance his feelings and possessiveness on their intelligent daughters. It portrays how daughters should understand the tender possessive feelings of responsible fathers. It shows a way for citizens how the society can be adopted to kick poverty and fence the nation with love. Apart from all these, it shows how great the sardarjees are and how bad to crack jokes on them. It also shows the humorous moments of life, sweet nothings and many more.

First half of the movie has got more humorous moments while the second half is filled with some emotion and message.

On a whole it’s a movie that deserves patronage of all matured audiences. It’s family movie that holds the emotional levels. Mass audiences may not connect with the movie due to lack of speed and other elements.