July 20, 2012 Y. Sunita Chowdary
It is okay to watch the same old love stories provided the director presents something about it differently. Even if there is nothing different, one gets points for convincing narration, the director should be in a position to pull it off confidently.
Tuneega Tuneega marks the debut of Sumanth Ashwin and few youngsters but the film instead of looking like a debut movie of Sumanth, appears like a television serial of retiring actors, actors working post retirement and basically seniors meant for a television serial who are brought in as padding artistes to cover up the nervousness of the newcomers. Excusez moi, even if television artistes are brought in they will exude some kind of freshness, excitement in their work..here most of them are all the director's favourites (character artistes) who are a constant factor in all his films.
Let's have a look at the family story and the number of actors who have out numbered the yuppie crowd. And who are these youngsters? They belong to the mindset of the 1970 generation. A girl picks a yellow rose from a shrub filled with red roses and while she does that she is shown as scheming and Sayaji Shinde giving her an intelligent retort to which the young woman doesn't take it kindly and leaves ranting. It reminds us of mouth twisting veteran actor Bindu.
Naga Babu, Chandra Mohan, Sayaji Shinde, Venkateswara Rao, Prabhu, Kasi Vishwanath, AVS, MS Narayana, Vinod Kumar, Sita, Gita, Vijayachander do their own thing and when they are not, they look bemused. Sumanth shows the spark and for a newcomer, he did a reasonably good job but he should have been groomed well, be it his looks or dressing. He is also quite at ease before the camera and there is no sign of awkwardness, his success rate also depends on lot of other things in and out of the industry.
The director cum father should allow him to choose his stories and let him learn by mistakes. By the end of the break there is nothing to look foward to..to fill in the gap and also prolong the story, the director brings in a dance episode. Tuneega Tuneega appears like a skeleton where the flesh is filled in appropriate places demanded by a formula film, an intro song for the hero, etc.
Also the story is too outdated, no one would want to sit through a kabootar, in the age of iPads and iPhones, passing messages. The messages on CG of animals is quite irrtitating, disturbs the focus of the viewer. The heroine who gets mad at her fiance for flinging a knife at a bird is willing to marry him, as if there is no other choice in life; She is also US returned, doesn't quite differentiate between the original and carbon copy of a love letter and agrees to a marraige proposal on a rebound.
Newcomer Rhea Chakraborty is a Genelia look alike, she has a cute smile and if she loses a bit of weight would look very good, apart from that some acting chops are necessary which aren't too important for heroines in Telugu films. Who is doing an Arundathi anyway? There is lot of focus on the character artistes than the main lead and the screen looks crowded, no we don't mean the presence of Prabhu. Thankfully he did a role that was not expected.
The director (MS Raju) still lives in an era where hero's run behind a kite and risk their lives dangling on a crackling tree and get their chest tatooed smiling. The movie fails to sustain your interest as there is no chemistry bewteen the hero and the heroine. Jyothi and the junior, what are they both upto? Bad dubbing.
Mr Raju, no one runs behind butterflies these days or sings about them, please make movies for the audience not yourself! Sumant Ashwin, welcome, you don't need chiselling, some hard work and focus in acting is enough!
