Movie: Bangaru Kodipetta
Director: Raj Pippalla
Cast: Navdeep, Swathi Reddy, Santosh, Laxman, Sanchalana
Rating: *
Getting swayed by tags and trying to play safe by tinkering with every possible genre is a mere synonym of a compromise, also qualifying enough to be an attribute of an amateur. Baffling is the half-baked nature of Telugu films in the recent past that the directors never submit themselves either to a story or a riveting screenplay, most often ending up making a namesake hotchpotch product just to get their directorial desires fulfilled. If Basanti was Chaitanya Dantuluri’s turn for a siege drama the previous week, Bangaru Kodipetta is the Boni maker Raj Pippalla’s turn for his celluloid-indulgence, an uncooked crime caper.
The first half of the film is primarily spent on finding everyone’s reason for their immediate monetary needs. There are four intertwined stories, one of an ex-sales executive in a detergent company, one of an audio arranger, one of a pizza delivery boy ambitious of a film chance with the last one being a villager who needs to repay his gambling debts. So much unneeded melodrama is forced into the stories even if the screenplay isn’t a farce. A love story between Navdeep and Swathi, an emotional saga between twin brothers (you never know the reason for their casting as twins) and the overplayed desperation of the teenager’s acting ambitions are supplemented by rather superficial performances to generate any minimum interest.
Other than Swathi, there aren’t any credible actors around who lend minimum honesty to their roles. Navdeep is alright, but his screen-presence isn’t as magnetic as one saw in his Arya 2 or a Chandamama. Most shocking of them all is the decision to include stuntmen Ram-Laxman in the film’s cast, who for a bare minimum don’t even get to explore their strengths of fighting out baddies and here, a fussy brother-bonding thread brings the two together, making the proceedings all the more frustrating. The repeated utterances of the audition speech by the aspirant actor adds to the ambiguity on display.
For a fact, there is never an element of genuine tension of committing a crime or the characters being worried or amused of its consequences. They go about their crime plan as if a banana is being fed into their mouths. The climax which at least to be justified is an example to show how aimless the entire exercise was. All the characters assemble together for a formality and dialogues about correctness, emotional connect are brought on.
The music tracks come at the most unexpected junctures too. The unstructured screenplay and the connections, an open abuse of its anthology attempt only do more damage in unlocking these loopholes. The title is the only apt aspect for they literally use both the gold and the egg embedded in it for justification. Bangaru Kodi Petta isn’t worth anyone’s 120 minutes.
Review by Srivathsan N, who had originally written it for Cinegoer.net
