Story

Harsha Vardhan (Mahesh Babu) is the son of a billionaire Ravi (Jagapathi Babu). Harsha Vardhan values people and relationships. He doesn’t care about his rich status and the business of his father. He comes to know about a village called Devarakota where people suffer due to atrocities committed by Seshu (Sampath Raj). Rest of the story is all about what he does after adopting village and about his personal connection to it!|

Artists Performance

Mahesh Babu: Koratala Siva has studied the personality and body language of Mahesh Babu well and presented him extremely well. Mahesh has given an outstanding performance in pre-climax emotional episode. It’s not just his acting and expressions, his trembling dialogue delivery adds up to the emotion in that scene. He shows his class in marriage fight scene and is extremely young in romantic episodes.

Others: Jagapati Babu is very natural as a billionaire and as a father who longs for the love of his son. Shruti Haasan is excellent as a woman of substance. Watch out for smoothness and expressions in her dances in this movie. Poorna has given a small cameo in Rama Rama song. Harish Uttaman is impressive as villain. Sampath Raj is good as the baddie. Rajendra Prasad excels as a good village Samaritan. Vennela Kishore is entertaining. Rahul Ravindran has done a key role with limited footage.

Technical departments

Story - screenplay - direction: Story of the film is about knowing your roots and giving back to the society. It’s a daring attempt to make a film with this kind of righteous and noble story line. Director Koratala Siva has carefully balanced the noble storyline and commercial image of Mahesh Babu give a rightly blended and engaging movie. Mahesh Babu has certain class associated with him and the director has used Mahesh Babu’s class to write a beautiful character. I had a basic doubt about how a guy who doesn’t earn anything on his own gives it back to the society. But, the director has given nice justification to it in the movie. The way Siva established Mahesh as a simple guy with simple thinking amidst the rich family is excellent. He has made sure that the nobility of the character is intact throughout the movie. The screenplay of the film is well written and interest in the film is sustained throughout. The way hero meets three baddies (related to each other) at different points of time shows how cleverly screenplay is written. Though the film has class orientation, director has made sure that there are exciting fights (especially marriage class flight, interval fight and mango farm fight). With Srimanthudu, Siva Koratala squashes the second film jinx and proves that he is here to stay with a bright future ahead.

Other departments: Music scored by Devi Sri Prasad is superb. All songs are good and background music is impressive. The director has used message oriented songs like Jaagore and Pora Srimanthuda to progress the story and elevate emotion. I have also loved Rama Rama, Jatha Kalise and Dimma Tirige songs. Cinematography by Madhie is a big highlight and complements the narration. Dialogues written by Koratala Siva are excellent and adds impact to the scenes. Lyrics by Rama Jogaiah Sastry deserves an applause except for Dimma Thirige song. Action choreography by Anal Arasu is outstanding. Marriage class flight, interval fight and mango farm fight offer a lot of freshness among fights we see in big star commercial films. However, pre-climax fight appear stretched. Art direction by AS Prakash is of fine quality. Editing of the film is good. New set of producers (Naveen Yerneni, Ravi Shankar Yalamanchili and Mohan Cherukuri) should be appreciated for taking such a gutsy decision to make a story-driven film with a superstar like Mahesh Babu.

Analysis: First half of the film is has class and romance with a superb interval block. Second half has nice emotions and action sequences. Plus points of the film are good storyline, Mahesh Babu’s performance, good emotions and right direction. On the flip side, the second half is little too lengthy. Srimanthudu is a perfect example of what happens when a huge star like Mahesh Babu opts for a content based film without going for beaten-to-death-entertainment-based movies. Srimanthudu will be a feather in Mahesh Babu’s cap and will be a big blockbuster as well. Go and watch it!!