August 03, 2012 Y. Sunita Chowdary
SV Ranga Rao makes his debut as an actor today with Mr 7. No one knows who he is and how he looks like but the publicity material says he is the Late actor's grandson. Looks like the actor is hell bent on keeping his grandpa's legacy green and flag flying high; He shares SVR's physique and also his name.
What one can say from watching the entire film is that both the filmmaker and the actor lack confidence, that is why the hero makes on and off appearances, very minimal and only in scenes that are imperative. Otherwise the film gives an impression that either comedian Srinivas Reddy or Shravan are the lead characters.
That doesn't mean the hero doesn't get to try all kinds of emotions. He has fights, dances, introduction song, boozing scene, item dance, romance and all, the only regret being that he cannot perform one of them convincingly. To get it straight, SVR just doesn't look young enough to be a hero and propose to heroine with a greeting card.
The film begins on a tedious note and ends not without giving a terrible migraine. The plot and narration is pathetic with loose ends in every two scenes. The hero grows up in an orphanage and takes to stealing cars for a living. Even a thief has a zeal, a goal to knock of an item but the actor has a frigid look throughout the film.
Even the most popular of the grandsons in the Telugu film industry cannot come up with a reasonably good drunken scene so how can we expect a debutant grandson to pull it off? There are zillion padding artistes to give the story a look and confidence and they fill up the two hours with cacophony and trivial jokes.
Why is the title Mr 7?? The number 7 is lucky for the thief, and any situation or a vehicle he lands up with the particular number comes in handy for him and so he gets sentimental about it. The story is about the thief stealing an old car and trying to sell it so that he can as soon as possible come up with a restaurant, to impress his girlfriend and her father.
He takes away a Benz this time and that belongs to a big thug who has his money stashed in it. After a long chase, the hero discovers the money and is also let off by a cop who happens to be his childhood friend. The heroine is eye candy.
The big saving grace of the film is the length, it is exactly two hours two minutes and that too appears like one is asphyxiating. The director Charan Reddy needs a lot of unlearning of knowledge before he can impress another hero with similar ambition and audiences with similar tolerance levels. Please try making home videos first before unleashing such misery.
The film is intolerable beyond 7 minutes, reason the first five minutes is well spent watching a great man's footage and photos.
