Movie: Tej I Love You
Rating: 2.5/5
Banner: Creative Commercials
Cast: Sai Dharam Tej, Anupama Parameshwaran, JP, Pavitra Lokesh and others
Music: Gopi Sundar
Cinematography: Andrew
Editor: S R Sekhar
Art: Saahi Suresh
Producer: K S Rama Rao
Story, screenplay and directed by: Karunakaran
Release date: July 6, 2018
After a series of flops, Sai Dharam Tej is waiting for a decent hit. 'Tej I Love You' is his attempt to come out from the slot that he’s stuck in.
There are no major expectations on this film as Sai Dharam Tej is going through a bad phase and it has been a very long time since Karunakaran delivered a hit.
Let’s find out whether they really spring a surprise this time.
Story:
For Tej (Sai Dharam Tej) who runs a music band called ‘Crazy Boys’, it is love at first sight with Nandini (Anupama), an NRI who comes to India to thank a person who helped her mother years ago. It was her mother’s last wish before she dies.
A series of fun incidents between Tej and Nandini lead to them to fall in love. As she is about to propose to him, she meets with an accident and that makes her forget everything that happened after her arrival to India including her friendship with Tej.
How Tej and his gang of friends make her realize what happened and whether she would fulfil her mother’s last wish forms the second half.
Artistes’ Performances:
Sai Dharam Tej has done a neat job in the role of a guy smitten with a beauty. He has played typical youngster’s role.
Anupama is good as Nandini. The teasing sequences between them are good. Jayaprakash, Surekha Vani, Pavitra Lokesh, Prudhvi and others are okay in their roles.
Technical Excellence:
The film has decent production and technical values. Andrew’s camera work is just adequate. Gopi Sundar has again failed in songs except for one decent song. Editor must have slept, silly sequences are kept lengthy.
Highlights:
Teasing scenes on Tej and Anupama
Some moments in second half
Drawback:
Routine story and narration
Boring moments
Overdose of sentiments
No exciting stuff
Analysis:
A hero or heroine getting short-term memory loss or brief amnesia after a minor accident is not at all new. It has been attempted in several movies in several genres.
Director Karunakaran takes the same theme for his latest romantic drama “Tej I Love You” and to make it “different”, he has added his own brand of romantic episodes, family sentiments and teasing scenes.
While the amnesia theme is okay, his brand of scenes are the main problem with this boringly told romantic drama.
Right from his debut film “Tholi Prema”, director Karunakaran is presenting romantic scenes in similar fashion in all his movies.
In most of his movies, the hero is a music buff (here he runs a band), heroine always looks cute and does nothing but to make hero fall in love. His threads are the same in every movie, only actors keep changing.
The real ‘different’ thread comes at interval bang, but the sequences followed are dealt in a farcical way.
She losing memory of certain period itself is hard to comprehend and the way Sai Dharam Tej and his gang employ some silly methods to bring her memory back tells us that Karunakaran has clearly run out of ideas. He is stuck in his early days of direction, none of his ideas appeal to today’s generation.
To save the film, he has further included a lengthy family drama sentiment in the final portions. By the time heroine fully regains her memory, headache creeps in for us.
Lousy screenplay and bad direction has made this film a boring affair. It is high time that actor Sai Dharam Tej rethinks about the choice of scripts he is selects. His attempt to try his hand at romantic genre turns out to be a failure.
Though the film is a lot better than his previous movie “Intelligent”, this too fails to appeal with its no head and no tail kind of narration.
All in all, “Tej I Love You” is an outdated romantic drama that tests the patience to the maximum. It lacks fresh ideas.
Bottom-line: Forget It