Ami Thumi Review

'Ami Thumi’, the much-touted all-Telugus comedy, hits the screens today.  Here we tell you what makes this movie unique, and what could have been done better.

Story:

The sales manager Ananth (Adivi Sesh) is in love with Deepika (Eesha Rebba), whose father (Tanikella Bharani) has issues with the boy’s social status.  Actually, Tanikella’s problems are two-fold.  He not only has to keep Ananth from being his stubborn daughter’s preferred man, but also keep his son Vijay (Avasarala Srinivas) from continuing his relationship with Maya (Aditi Myakal), the daughter of Tanikella’s estranged business partner.

In comes the curiously-named Sri Chilipi (Vennela Kishore), the son of a greedy, deep-in-debts businessman who wants an alliance with Tanikella only because he is rich.

Since Chilipi doesn’t know how Deepika looks, the latter decides to use him as a pawn.

How Chilipi falls prey to Deepika’s ploys and ends up being made a ‘bakra’ to boot, is what the rest of the movie is about.

Analysis:

If not for anything, Mohankrishna Indraganti deserves kudos for his inclination for dialogues with a strong native flavour.  He is one of the very few directors with a taste for literature rooted in the local culture.  And the same shows itself in the kind of characters he pens, barring a 'Gentleman', if at all.

'Ami Thumi' comes with a largely paper-thin plot, but what makes it worth a watch are the imaginative dialogues, and Vennela Kishore's comic timing.  For all practical reasons, Kishore is the film's main lead, with Adivi Sesh and Avasarala Srinivas playing extended cameos wrongly glorified as main leads.

The oddball humour will have its takers among those classes of audiences who fell in love with the kind of comedy seen in 'Ashta Chamma'.  Only that, unlike 'Ashta Chamma', 'Ami Thumi' doesn't have largely relatable emotions to buffer the screwball characters.

Kishore is surely a 'bakra' with a difference.  On the one hand, he is being gamed by Eesha, and, on the other, he is numbed (and twice, paralyzed rather literally!) by Shyamala's looks.  The pre-interval block that lasts 15 minutes or so brings the roof down, with Kishore, Tanikella and Shyamala tickling the funny bone like crazy.

In a largely Telugu-fied cinema, Kishore's occasional English-language phrases position him as a beleaguered groom trying to seem suave and respectable to others.

Aditi Myakal as Maya is sandwiched between Tanikella, who abhors her father, and her step-mother, who brandishes the gun in an act of comical exaggeration.  One wonders why a writer-director of Indraganti's stature didn't find this character as providing enough scope for some emotional touch.

For that matter, the film suffers from lack of non-oddball elements.  Avasarala, a fine actor, could have offered much-needed doses of seriousness in terms of mild doses of sentimentality, so also the much-vulnerable Aditi and an otherwise conventional Eesha.  The absence of interludes in terms of songs in the first half only exacerbates the problem.  Somewhere in the second half, one is tired of watching the same kind of comicality.

For all the brief and excellently-visualized title song, the climax is more of the same.

As performances go, everybody does fullest justice.  Kishore is the film's (closet) hero.  He is that rare comedian who can sound equally convincing as a duffer as well as someone who is frustrated with duffers (his sidekick in this case).  This is going to be his most important film.  Eesha is an actress with a lot of potential for sure.  She is cute and adorable as a lover girl who speaks in Telangana dialect.  Tanikella is cool after a long time.  Adivi Sesh and Avasarala Srinivas do a neat job.

Mani Sharma's BGM is commendable.  The second half's songs are neatly coalesced into the narration.

Verdict:

'Ami Thumi' is a comedy of quirks, wherein Vennela Kishore outwits everybody else, ironically while being damned throughout the movie.  For a film that was shot in just 36 days, this one bears testimony to what thorough pre-production can achieve in terms of technicality.  Lack of emotional range affects the proceedings, especially in the second half.

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