Rey Review

There are at least two things that our filmmakers are not good at: making a film on a modern art, and a film with mafia backdrop.  While the former are few and far between, the latter are overly indulged, as the genre offers good amount of opportunity to produce formulaic stuff.  YVS Chowdhary returns with a film that is a mix of both the elements.  Dance and gangster elements are blended to a poor effect starring Sai Dharam Tej.

Sharddha Das as Janna is a winner of Best of World title twice.  With an aim of staying on the top, she becomes the girl friend of Dongi (Arpit Ranka), a don.  Ruthless and selfish, she gets those who threaten to upstage her out of the way.  Shandi (Parhad Shanwaz) is killed.  Amrutha (Saiyami Kher) is her sister, who joins a dance school in Jamaica, with his brother’s dream!  Rock (Sai Dharam Tej) and his friends join the same dance school with an intent of befriending girls and dating them.  They have no other preoccupation except the girls.  As expected, Rock falls in love with Amrutha.  Their partnership takes form and they aim to go places.  However, the wily Janna has other plans for them.  Rock sets forth to the US to defeat Janna.

The curtain is thus raised for a showdown.

YVS pays a tribute to ANR, Janaki Ram, his music director Chakri and Michael Jackson.  His film, however, is an ode to many tried-and-tested formulas and even filmmakers like Lawrence Raghava (read ‘Style’).

While the premise itself is nothing exciting, YVS goes about relying too heavily on style rather than substance.  Sai Dharam Tej is one he relies on to deliver bucks, even as huge doses of skin show and doubles entendres are given as bonus.

With a film set in a foreign location replete with skimpily clad women and all, playing it to the gallery becomes too irresistible.  If Shraddha Das and others titillate, Sai takes it upon himself to get the dance moves right.  Chiranjeevi’s fans have enough of sense of déjà vu, thanks to the remix song.

Style had Chiru and Nag appearing for real, but here one has to be content with references to Pawan Kalyan, Mahesh Babu and NTR (read the spoof ‘3 Intelligents’).  Gunasekharan’s cinematography is good.  With the production values up-to-the-mark, the writing should have matched it up.

A chase sequence here, a lengthy song there, you have a film that has a prohibitively long run time (or so it seems).  Jayaprakash Reddy in the role of the dance school’s principal should have been creative.  Being an old-timer, YVS should have resurrected Venu Madhav.

What rides roughshod over our sensibilities is the violence, more than the music.  So, in a way, it is Salim-trumps-Style-after-meeting-Style!  Why do we need so much of the same even at a time when noise is not rewarded by the audience. It's a Sai show and a YVS sorry show.

It is Sai’s film if we consider his strenuous efforts at getting his dance near perfect.  Unlike in his first film ‘Pilla Nuvu Leni Jeevitham’, he is more energetic here, at least in some sequences.  Otherwise, he was more endearing in his first.  Saiyami Kher and Shraddha Das compete with each other to look glamorous.

Chakri’s music is a let-down and it is inconceivable how it can be so when the film is partly about dance.

Verdict: Watch it for Sai Dharam Tej's dance and performance.

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