|
Maa
Balaji - A review
|
|
Bhargav
Arts
Maa Balaji
Jeevi Rating: 4/5
|
| Genre |
|
Family Drama |
| Jeevi
Rating |
| 4/5
(Four on a scale of five) |
| Cast |
| Naveen,
Maheswari, Laya, Sishwa, Vinod Kumar, Satyanarayana and Brahmanandam |
| Credits |
Story: Bhargav Unit
Dialogues: Ganesh Patro
Photography: SriVenkat
Choreography: Siva-Subramanyam
Music: Vandemataram Srinivas
Executive Producer: Bhargav Reddy
Producer: Gopal Reddy
Screenplay & Direction: Kodi Rama Krishna |
| Theatrical
Release Date |
| 23rd
September 1999 |
| Review |
|
Balaji
(Naveen) is an ambitious dynamic youngster with ideas. His
parents are old aged and belong to a middle class family.
Balaji aims for the sky and falls flat on his face every time.
In that process he is entrapped in debt amounting 10 lacs.
Balaji has a sister-in-law called Sujatha (Laya), who loves
him to the hilt. Balaji is also favorable for the idea of
marrying her. As Balaji fails in all his ventures, his money
lenders are after his blood. Balaji, the man in disguise,
chooses the convenient way of forgoing problems, i.e. he commits
suicide by jumping into sea. He insures an LIC amount of 10
lacs for his money lenders. Sujatha makes herself a widow
(though she is not married to Balaji) and starts staying along
with the parents of Balaji.
Ramana(Sudhakar), a fisherman, traps the body of Balaji and
saves him. Penchalyya (Brahmanandam) is the owner of the boat,
who owes huge amount of money to Balwinder Singh (Satyanarayana).
Penchalayya interprets Balaji to be a rich man and Balaji
acts as a dumb and deaf guy for the sake of his convenience.
A harassed Balwinder grabs the boat as the security for the
money Penchalaiah owes to him. Then the 'comedy of errors'
start that ends up in Penchalaiah keeping Balaji and Ramana
as the security for his money and going back with his boat.
There it is! A huge palatial building called 'Punjabi House'.
It has got lot of family members of Balwinder Singh and a
number of servants. The main family members include Pooja
(Maheswari), Sishwa and Sikandar (Vinod Kumar). Pooja is dumb
girl by birth. Sishwa and Sikandar are her siblings. They
find it difficult to get a suitable guy for Pooja, because
she is a dumb girl. Sikandar is in Delhi searching for a sardarji
for Pooja and incidentally finds one (Harbhajan Singh). Pooja
is reluctant to marry the Harbhajan Singh as she comes to
know that he is after her money. Meantime Balaji succeeds
in wooing Pooja inadvertently. Pooja and Sishwa comes to know
that Balaji is not a dumb guy and uses him to play their ploy
to get the match with Harbhajan canceled.
As the fuming Sikandar is back to 'Punjabi' house, Pooja playfully
falls in love with Balaji. She comes to know about the flashback
of Balaji and sends Rs 10 lacs to his parents as chit funds
amount and she enquires about Sujatha and comes to know that
she is staying in her hubby's house (not knowing that Sujatha
is treating late Balaji as her husband). After coming to know
that Sujatha is married Balaji feels happy for her and plants
Pooja firmly in his heart.
Sikandar comes to know about the love that is blossoming between
Balaji and Pooja and decides to get them married after talking
to Penchalayya. Balaji then confesses to everyone that he
is not a dumb guy and elaborates his flash back.
Then the parents of Pooja go to the parents of Balaji. When
they inform that Balaji is going to get married to Pooja,
Sujatha disappears from the scene.
As we head for an exhilarating climax we have a hero and two
willing heroines vying for him. Who will tie the knot to Balaji
.. Sujatha or Pooja? You gotta watch this beautiful film on
silver screen to find it out!!
|
| Performance |
Actors:
Naveen: Naveen did an excellent job. His role does not
have dialogues for the half of the film and in the remaining
half the heroines would not let him speak. Naveen looks very
handsome.
Maheswari: Kodi knows how to extract the action from
Maheswari. She acted extremely well. As she is playing the role
of dumb girl, she needs to do lot of emoting. Kodi made sure
that only positive aspects of maheswari are projected over the
screen( ala krishna vamsi for gulabi). She looks very sensible
and beautiful.
Laya: Laya is on the way to conquer the hearts of telugu
viewer from movie to movie. She did an excellent job and looks
very cute with 'rendu jadalu'.
Shishwa: Sishwa did a very good supporting role for
Maheswari. She is an alter ego to Maheswari in this film. She
did exceedingly well with in her limitations.
Vinod Kumar: Vinod Kumar looks like a real angry surd
in this film. He did a cameo role in this film.
Satyanarayana: Satyanarayana fits the bill of sardarji
well. A few surd jokes are shown using him.
Brahmanandam: Brahmanandam is in his elements. Without
his sensible humor first half of this film would have gone for
a toss. Brahmanandam shows a different dimension to his humor
in the laugh rioting scenes of this film.
Direction: The total credit of this film's craftiness
goes to Kodi. He made sure that there is undercurrent humor
is intact behind the dumbness of Balaji. He made sure that maheswari
looks very beautiful. More surprisingly Kodi came up with a
film sans vulgarity. There is no double entendre in this film.
No exposing of heroine in the songs.
Story: This film is a remake of Malayali hit 'Punjabi
House'. This thin story that has to be dealt sensitively
Screenplay: Screenplay of Kodi is slick and telugu nativity
is never missing either in comedy or in sentiment scenes.
Production: Inclusion of Bhargav Reddy into the production
activity seems to have given a new flavor to this Bhargav Arts
film.
Dialogues: There are lot of humorous and a few punch
dialogues. Bhargav arts permanent dialogue writer Ganesh Pathro
did full justice to his Job.
Music: After 'Swayamvaram' Vandemataram Srinivas has
come one with one more melodious album. 'Neeli Gaganamlo' is
the highlight song of the film.
Photography: Though this film is made on a small budget,
there is lot of richness in the film because of the characteristic
photography by SriVenkat.
Choreography: There are two punjabi 'balle balle' family
songs(just like HAHK istyle), one solo song, a superb melodious
romantic song and a sad duet. The Siva-Subramanyam pair did
a commendable job. |
| Analysis |
| S
Gopal Reddy has taken a risk of selecting a story in which heroine
is totally dumb and Hero pretends to be dumb. And this film
comes at the time when another film with hero in a dumb role
'Seenu' is released. But the director made sure that nativity
is not missing. More over hilarious comedy by Brahmanandam makes
us laugh uncontrollably. First half is in lighter vein and second
half is very gripping. Climax is the heart and soul of the film.
Wait a few weeks and you will know the fate of this clean sensible
film. |
|
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>End
of Maa Balaji Review
|
Back
to Archives Page |
Do you have a suggestion for us? Please send
us the feed back
