Ek Niranjan Review: Just Plate Meal

Film: Ek Niranjan
Rating: 2.75/5
Banner: Adithya Ram Movies
Cast: Prabhas, Kangana Ranaut, Sonu Sood, Tanikella, Makrand Deshpande, Mukul Dev, Posani, Ali, Brahmanandam, Brahmaji, Abhinayasri, Sunil, Venu Madhav etc
Music: Mani Sharma
Cinematography: Shyam K Naidu
Editing: M R Varma
Fights: Stun Siva
Story, dialogues, screenplay, director: Puri Jagannadh
Producer: Adithya Ram
Release date: 29/10/2009

The Puri Prabhas team has come up once again after ‘Bujjigadu’ and this is a litmus test for both since they have not been able to score success lately. How good is ‘Ek Niranjan’? Let us see..

Story:
Chotu (Prabhas) is an orphan who makes an earning by catching hold of criminals and taking commission from the police. He is also in search of his parents and keeps pampering Chidambaram (makrand) his guardian to reveal the truth since he kidnaps Chotu when he is a baby. Things change when Sameera (kangana), a music teacher enters into his life and along with her also come Johnny Bhai (sonu), Kailash (mukul) and others. What is the link between all? Does Chotu get to meet his family in the end? All this forms the rest of the story.

Performances: Prabhas
Yet another energetic performance from him but he needs to change his dialogue delivery which has become repetitive and sometime rolling. The idea of getting closer to the masses is a good thought but this doesn’t work always. He can recollect his diction for ‘Chatrapathi’ which had more punch and impact.

Kangana
Though not very pretty, she has got an innocent sex appeal making her attractive. She looks just average and did justice to her character given her debut in Telugu.

Sonu Sood
Interesting and entertaining performance, his sequences with Brahmaji are a highlight. He seems to be filling the gap of Raghuvaran in a large way with his body language and voice.

Brahmanandam, Ali, Abhinayasri
The trio has come up with a comedy track but that has not been able to impress. Both Brahmi and Ali look stereotype. Abhinayasri looks shapely and looks seductive in few scenes.

Mukul Dev, Makrand Deshpande
These Bollywood imports were not required as their characters didn’t have much to offer. Not really sure why they had to be roped in. Makrand is a highly talented actor but his caliber was not used properly.

Others like Posani, Venu Madhav, Sunil did their bit as required but not very appealing.

Tanikella Bharani and Sangeetha are ok.

Technically, the highlight in the movie is music. All departments functioned well and the production values are also impressive. The director seems to have not kept full energies in some areas of script. Hence the drop down in entertainment graph here are there.

Highlights:
Prabhas
Sonu Sood
Puri’s Dialogues
‘Amma Ledu…’ Lyrics
Music

Disappointments:
Ali-Brahmanandam comedy track
Choice of heroine
Screenplay

Analysis:
The movie promises good entertainment in the take off but the graph suffers in the flow. The problem in the movie is with the lack of comedy carried by comedy artistes. The actual comedy was worked well with Prabhas and Sonu Sood. And it is obvious that the choice of heroine has reduced the scope of attracting family audience to theatres. It’s bluntly limited to mass audiences and as there is no potential for the movie to allure repeat-viewers, the purpose wouldn’t work completely.

First half of the movie is entertaining but the second half is disturbing to some extent. The graph has fallen down when the narration goes to Bangkok. Puri seems to be so obsessed with Bangkok in his films and hardly understands the need to roll cameras there every time. The climax gets mixed response- some feel that it’s subtle to end the movie that way but others may feel it’s incomplete.

On a whole, it’s a movie that hasn’t reached expectations although entertained to some extent.