Story

Karthik (Mahat Raghavendra) is a son of a millionaire and a student whose interest lies elsewhere. He never believes that scoring good marks is the way to glory. He falls in love with his classmate Priyanka (Archana Kavi) and after four years everybody leaves campus for further studies. Priyanka prefers going to USA for further studies instead of hanging around with Karthik who failed in 16 subjects. The rest of the story is all about how he proves that a failure in love and studies need not be a failure in life as well.

Artists Performance

Mahat Raghavendra is good with acting, but need to work on his appearance. He is too small-framed and he needs to put on a bit of weight. His Telugu and diction is good, but he should raise the pitch while delivering dialogues to be effective. Archana Kavi is adequate and she suited the role well. Pia Bajpai is a class looking girl. If taken proper care by the director in terms of characterization and looks, she can do exceedingly well. The best casting part of the film is the friends’ gang. All the friends excelled in their roles. Srihari who used Godavari dialect is spontaneous and entertaining. Insi Gutta (sister of Jwala Gutta) is good and she uses typical Telangana dialect in a brash way. Pragati and Sarath Babu plays parents of hero. Ali gives a good entertainment in the second half as a guy who starts his conversation with a big NO. Brahmanandam played the role of an irritating guy, but his character doesn’t help the movie.

Technical department

Basic plot of the film is very much identifiable. The intent of making this film is really good. However, intent doesn’t itself translate into an engaging film. It should be narrated with a tight screenplay and interesting scenes. There are two conflict points in the movie. The first one is backbench student winning in life (that is the get a job). This conflict starts at the start of the movie and end in the middle of second half. Hence, people will not get engaged with the happenings of the film once hero gets a job. The love thread with one girl goes into a triangle love mode. The director tried resolving the triangle love conflict after hero getting job. Hence the pre-climax and climax portions became uninteresting. Though Madhura Sreedhar dealt a part of backbench student main conflict well, he didn’t narrate love parts interestingly.

Cinematography by Prasad GK is alright. Songs scored by Sunil Kashyap are good thought they pale in comparison with earlier Madhura Sreedhar’s film albums. Background music is not good. Dialogues are just average except for a couple of interesting ones.

Analysis

Backbench Student is film with good intent, but is flawed due to improper script work. The screenplay and narrative style (back and forth which is confusing at times) are the culprits. It’s a clean film though director tried exploring the wild angle of girls boozing with guys in the first half of the film.