Early Tollywood: SUMAN

8.08.2009

7.03.2008

4.06.2008

Banner: Bommarillu
Dialogues: Chintapally Ramana
Lyrics: Sirivennela Seetarama Sastry
Music: MM Keeravani
Story - Screenplay - Direction - Production: YVS Chowdary
Presenter: Yalamanchali Geeta
Theatrical Release Date: 1st May 2002

Cast:
Aditya,
Ankita,
Hari Krishna,
Bhanu Priya,
Vineeth,
Sanghavi,
Suman,
Rachana,
Viswanath,
Lakshmi,
Jeeva,
Jaya Prakash,
Chitram Seenu,
Kallu Chidambaram,
Kalpana Rai,
Kalpana,
Achyut,
Naveen and Chakravarthy

Story

Nani (Aditya) is an orphan and a fun loving college student. He makes his living by acting as a marriage broker. He gets a proposal to find matches to three sisters namely Indu (Bhanu Priya), Chandu (Rachana) and Sindhu (Sanghvi). But their father is adamant that his daughters should get married to three brothers. Nani discovers that there is a set of three unmarried brothers in a village. Nani converts himself as the younger brother of these three sisters and visits the village of three brothers on the eve of a festival. These visitors are put up in a house, which is just apposite to that of those three brothers, namely Krishnama Naidu (Hari Krishna), Chandrama Naidu (Suman) and Sreenivasa Naidu (Vineeth).

These three brothers have a pretty younger sister named Priya (Ankita). Priya and Nani are classmates back in the city college. Both of them love each other, but never express it. Nani starts playing the role of cupid for the three brothers and three sisters. That village has a rule that the brothers cannot marry unless the sister in the house is married. That's why these three brothers remain unmarried even after they entered 30's, as their sister is not ready for the marriage.

There is a woman called Achamamba (Lakshmi), who once loved Raghava Naidu (K Viswanath), the father of three brothers. But due to some circumstances, he marries another lady. Hence Achamamba remains as a spinster and vows to create havoc in the lives of Raghava Naidu and his sons.

Achamamba impresses Raghava Naidu in a competition and proposes to marry off her foreign returned nephew with the daughter of Raghava Naidu. After this incident, Priya confesses Nani that she loves him. The rest of the film deals with how Krishnama Naidu takes the lead to put an end to the vices of Achamamba and successfully arranges the marriages for these four pairs.

Artists:

Hari Krishna: Hari Krishna acted like a live wire in this film. He did a cool job in spite of having so many negative points. He is the main hero of the film and he justified it with his performance.

Aditya: He looks like a shorter version of Ravi Teja. His mannerisms, dialogue delivery, body language and appearance are very much similar to Ravi Teja. Aditya dialogue delivery is pretty bad and he overacted in most of the scenes.

Ankita: Ankita is the grown up 'Rasna' girl (She acted in 'I Love You Rasna' ads when she was a kid). She looks pretty cute. But she is on the back foot when emoting sensitive feelings.

Lakshmi: She did the role of main villain in this film with a great poise. She expressed ferocity and guile with equal ease.

Technical Departments:

Story - Screenplay - Direction: YVS Chowdary tried making a complete family story with necessary quotient of mass elements. He succeeded in narrating the story in an interesting style with the twists inserted at the right moments. His ability to select good music and finesse in canning songs with a romantic flavor helped the film become a musical entertainer. But, he tried splitting up the scenes equally between four pairs. This led the film to become a 3-hour fare and scenes between Suman-Rachana and Vineeth-Sanghavi are little boring. In the climax too he tried putting too many mass elements (like the climax of his other film Seetarama Raju), which would really irk the sensibilities of audiences.

Dialogues: 'Pagilipoddi … Every thing is fair in love and war' is the most powerful dialogue told by Hari Krishna to Lakshmi. You really can't expect such kind of powerful mass dialogues from the pen of comedy dialogue writer Chintapally Ramana. He gave youth-oriented dialogues for the young pair and ferocious dialogues for Lakshmi and Hari Krishna. Chitapalli Ramana did a neat job.

Music: Keeravani came up with very good music for this film. All the songs are melodious. He customized the tune of 'Winds of Change' for a song in this film. He also used the same tune as the background music for the scenes between Ankita and Aditya. Background score of the film is also impressive.

Photography: Photography is another asset of the film. Village locations add some native color to the camerawork.

Production: YVS Chowdary worked really hard to complete this film. It consists of huge star cast and getting their dates with combinations is difficult. This film saw the light of day after being stopped in middle for lack of funds. And YVS Chowdary is so confident of film's success that he announced the venue (as Gudiwada) and date for 100 days function. He did a satisfactory job as a producer.

Analysis: This film has an old and traditional story line. But the treatment is fresh. First half is entertaining with the director taking his own time in establishing the characters. The second half goes on a serious note, with mass elements like fights and serious dialogues taking over the aspect of entertainment. The climax of the film is dealt shabbily with unnecessary fights. Over all, this film might become a minimum guarantee film as it has good music, comedy, mass elements and treatment. We have to wait and see if labor day (may 1st) release of'Lahiri Lahiri lahirilo' yields the desired result for YVS Chowdary's labor.