Chintakayala Ravi Movie Review

Film: Chintakayala Ravi
My Rating: 3.5/5
Banner: Sri Lakshmi Narasimha Productions
Music: Vishal Sekhar
Editing: Sreekar Prasad
Lyrics: Chandrabose
Producer: Nallamalupu Bujji
Screenplay Stoy: Kona Venkat
Direction: Yogesh
Release Date: Oct 2nd, 2008
Cast: Venkatesh, Anushka, Mamata Mohandas, NTR (special appearance), Lakshmi, Prakash Raj (voice), Sayaji Shinde, Brahmanandam, Venu Madhav, Sunil, MS Narayana, Chandra Mohan, Pradeep Sakti, Bharat (child), Ali, Arti Chabria, Venu, Nikita etc

My Review:

Story:
Chintakayala Ravi (Venkatesh) works in a bar in USA and pretends to his sentimental mother (Lakshmi) back in India as if he is working as a software engineer leading a fancy lifestyle in USA. His mother sets up a girl called Lavanya (Mamata Mohandas) as Ravi's match. Lavanya asks her New York buddy Sunita (Anushka) to find out the conduct of Chintakayala Ravi. The rest of the story is all about what happened between Ravi, Lavanya and Sunita.

Performances:

Venkatesh: He did his trademark comedy and sentiment in the film. He is excellent. Anushka: She is nice in the role of the main heroine. Mamata Mohandas: She is good in this film compared to her earlier outings in Telugu film industry. Lakshmi impresses in this film like she did for Murari film. Comedy by Sunil as Pendurti Babu is satisfactory. Child artist Bharat did well in the climax of the film though his character is underdeveloped. Brahmanandam, Venu Madhav and Srinivasa Reddy are adequate as the friends of hero. Arti Chabia did an item song. Ajay did a completely different role convincingly. Ali's character is like an extension of her Nachmi character in Chiruta film. Nikita is very cute with her own dubbing. Venu did a vital yet small role. NTR sizzles in 'Shava Shava' song and entertains the crowds. Prakash Raj gave voiceover to this film in the initial scenes and in the climax and his narration is an asset.

Technical Side:

Story of the movie is nice and predictable. But the backdrop of USA offers some variety. Direction by Yogesh is partly OK. He could able to introduce and establish all primary characters well. But he could not run the story with interesting narration in the middle of the film. But he manages the climax decently. He handles some of the humor scenes well. However there are a few inspired comedy scenes like exam scene (Mr. Bean series), kitikilu 2008 (windows 2008 Telugu version forward mail) etc. There is some toilet humor too. Narration of the film is slow.

Other Sides Of The Movie:

Music by Vishal Sekhar is an asset to the film. Bagunde Bagunde followed by Enduko is the best on the screen. Mani Sharma scored background music. Dialogues by Kona Venkat are good. A couple of dialogues like 'akkada (USA) sanduko vanda software engineers vuntaru' and 'aavida data whorehousing (data warehousing) lo work chestundi' are entertaining in the first half. Cinematography by Ravindra Babu is good. He shot the USA part very well. The visuals are rich. Nallamapulu Bujji should be appreciated for spending good money on budget to make a film with rich visuals and sound by hiring the best of technicians and cast for the job.

Final Analysis:

Movie was good. First half an hour of the film is pretty good. It slows slow down after that and the film takes up again from the last song. The strong points of the film are Venkatesh and mother sentiment. On the other side, the latter part of the first half and the former part of the second half should have been made in an interesting way. The mother sentiment and the marriage ambiance towards the climax could attract the Venky's strong base of family crowds. On a whole, Chintakayala Ravi is an ok film if you can excuse bit of screenplay glitches in the middle of the movie.