Raavan (2010)

Trailer 1 Alice in Wonderland: For a second, I thought that I had entered into the past only to realize that this movie is yet to be released in Hyderabad. By the way, Alice in Wonderland was the 1st post in this blog.

Trailer 2 The Last Airbender: Manoj N Shyamalan (Sixth Sense fame) was once considered to be the most gifted story teller of his generation. That appears to be a distant past now. The Last Airbender is his latest movie. The trailer showed some great visual effects. But I'm not very impressed with it as a whole. Considering his recent track record this is a very important movie for him.

Coming to Raavan, from the trailer and the general talk, you might have guessed the basic premise. Raavan (Abhishek Bacchhan) kidnaps Sita (Aish). Ram (Vikram), with the help of Hanuman (Govinda) tries to get Sita back and kill Raavan. Ofcourse, the motivation for Raavan's abduction of Sita is the insult of Surpanaka (Priyamani). What if this basic premise constitutes the entire movie with nothing else? The movie is going to suck & that is what Raavan is. What makes the original Ramayan interesting is the many many interesting characters and subplots without which even it would be uninteresting. This is where Raavan fails.

Varudu (2010)

Verdict:  4/10

Fine. Where should I start?

You came across an interesting plot point - "What if during an arranged marriage the bride & the groom decide to not see each other until the last moment of tying the knot". You don't know what to do next with this point. So you go in every direction north, south, east & west, search for all the available movie cliches. You put all those into a movie assuming that audience are going to watch anyway since your hero is a top star & finally what will you get. Presto! you have the worst movie of Allu Arjun's career "Varudu".

In a recent interview, Allu Arjun said, “Gunasekhar narrated me the story in 2 minutes and I liked 4 scenes narrated in that 2-minute narration". After watching Varudu, I was left wondering what those 4 amazing brilliant wonderful scenes were.