Movie: Sita
Rating: 2/5
Banner: AK Entertainments
Cast: Bellamkonda Sai Srinivas, Kajal Aggarwal, Sonu Sood, Mannara Chopra, Tanikella Bharani, and others
Dialogues: Lakshmi Bhupal
Music: Anup Rubens
Cinematography: Sirsha Ray
Editor: Kotagari
Producers: Ram Bramam Sunkara
Written and Direction: Teja
Release date: May 24, 2019
After the success of “Nene Raju Nene Mantri”, director Teja is back in league. His latest movie “Sita” starring Bellamkonda Srinivas and Kajal Aggarwal has created good buzz thanks to its trailer.
Let’s analyze.
Story:
Sita (Kajal Aggarwal) is a business woman and is highly-money minded. When she lands in trouble over a property, she seeks the help of a local MLA Basavaraju (Sonu Sood). He helps her and in return seeks favour from her, to be his love partner for a month.
She denies and he starts creating obstacles to her financially and to her business. Suddenly, her father dies and he leaves his money which amounts to thousands of crores to Ram. She can only get that money if she marries him.
Sita now heads to Bhutan where Ram (Bellamkonda Sai) lives in a Buddhist monastery. He looks dimwit but is highly intelligent. Their journey begins.
What happens next is anybody’s guess.
Artistes’ Performances:
The film primarily revolves around Kajal Aggarwal. Her characterization of Sita is what makes the movie different from the regular stories. Kajal Aggarwal as money-minded woman has pulled it off with ease.
Bellamkonda Srinivas has played innocent guy’s role but he doesn’t have enough talent to pull this off. He is just okay. Sonu Sood has played typical villain’s role.
Bittiri Satti’s comedy generates some laughs. Tanikella as sidekick is okay.
Technical Excellence:
The first half of the film is narrated like a road journey and the cinematography is excellent here. Sirsha has captured the locations of ‘Bhutan episodes’ beautifully.
Music is mixed bag – only two songs are catchy. Dialogues are huge plus point. Editing is bad, the length is inexcusable.
Highlights:
Sonu Sodd and Tanikalla episodes
Drawback:
Never-ending second half
Illogical sequences
Predictable climax
Analysis
Unlike his regular style, director Teja has begun the story in a very interesting manner as the plot point looks quite different. He presents the character of Kajal Aggarwal as someone who is ruthless, money-minded and bold. In contrary her name is Sita.
She accepting to be lover to Sonu Sood for one month and later conning is quite a departure from the heroine’s characterizations of Telugu movies.
Such characterization is generally reserved for male protagonist but Teja has switched the genders and presented it in different way with lot of entertainment. There is not a single dull-moment in the first hour.
When everything is going smooth, director Teja applies breaks and starts narrating in his usual style. All the novelty factor suddenly goes off.
Forget worrying about novelty, even the normal proceedings have completely gone wrong from here. By interval, it is clear that Teja’s ‘new material’ is over.
The second half goes in predictable manner. The twists and turns put off. Ram aka Bellamkonda is introduced as a guy who is brought up in a monastery completely cut off from the real world.
He also has physical and mental issues, he can’t bear ‘yelling’, he gets palpitations if he doesn’t drink tea by 10.30 am morning. He has never stepped outside.
But the moment, he starts journey with Kajal Aggarwal, he knows how to talk with a police officer, how to beat people and do all the action stunts.
He even argues for Kajal Aggarwal in a court case when she’s facing cheque bounce charges. When did he learn law? He studied law book while sitting a lawyer’s office for one hour.
He has such an amazing grasping power that he can learn 26 languages, he can count 97 pins in seconds and a law book in an hour. This court drama turns silly and illogical.
The second half is typical Teja’s movie and with never-ending climax. All the good moments that it offered in the beginning go waste.
The plus points of the movie are the early sequences, Bittiri Satti’s comedy, and some entertaining dialogues. To an extent, Sonu Sood’s characterization is also fun. But, in the end, it becomes a tiresome watch.
Bottom-line: Never Ending Saga
(Venkat Arikatla can be reached at venkat@greatandhra.com)