Pellaindi Kaani

We saw the movie, kaani… It’s got Naresh and Kamalini Mukherjee and Sunil and Bhanupriya, kaani… It’s directed by E V V Satyanarayana, kaani… We could write the entire movie review like this, kaani…

That just about summarizes Pellaindi Kaani... In what kind of movie nowadays do you see a mentally challenged man’s mother taking the advice of her friends and deciding that the cure for his illness is to get him married and have children?

The posters of Pellaindi Kaani… that are up in the streets completely mislead you into thinking that it’s another offering like Attili Sattibabu LKG or from the Allari Naresh template. The supporting cast is virtually the same, but the comedy in this movie is that the makers are expecting people to enjoy it.

Atchibabu (Naresh) is the only son of Rajeshwari (Bhanupriya), and is heir to her fortune. Unfortunately, a childhood accident leaves Atchibabu somewhat mentally challenged, and he is more like an innocent child than a full-grown Tollywood hero. Rajeshwari’s unscrupulous brothers (Kota Srinivasa Rao and Krishna Bhagawan) have their own plans for her wealth.

In accordance with her friends’ suggestion, Rajeshwari starts hunting for a bride for Atchibabu, and guess who’s available? Gayatri (Kamalini Mukherjee) loves poor Sivaji (Harish), but agrees to murder her feelings and marry Atchibabu because the wedding will help pay for the bypass surgery of her impoverished father (Chandramohan).

The wedding is followed by predictable bedroom conundrums. His friend and servant Subramaniam (Sunil) attempts to creatively teach him about the facts of life – including archeological explorations of erotic temple art, visual explorations of Shakeela movie posters, and musical explorations of Abhinaya Sri. In spite of all this, birds remain menu items and bees remain little stinging insects for Atchibabu.

When the conniving brothers make it impossible for Atchibabu to have children and Rajeshwari finds out about Gayatri’s previous relationship with Sivaji, like a good mother-in-law she nullifies the marriage, gets Gayatri and Sivaji married, and sends them off with a Harshad Mehtaesque suitcase full of money.

That’s only half of Pellaindi Kaani… and if it already feels like a full movie, we don’t blame you. When Quentin Tarantino found that Kill Bill was turning out to be one very long movie, he cleverly chopped it into two separate releases. Here we see the reverse treatment, where it seems like two movies have been attached to either end of one interval.

Naresh is hamstrung for 90% of Pellaindi Kaani… because the script demands that he plays an innocent Swathi Muthyam type character, and he can’t do the stuff that he’s good at. Bhanupriya as the mother is suitably hysterical and melodramatic.

Kamalini Mukherjee, alas, is the person who suffers the most (apart from the viewers). Instead of the spunky, street-smart girl that she’s played in previous outings, she’s forced to be a Sati-Savitri type who humbly submits to everything the men in her life tell her to do. Being Kamalini Mukherjee, she does pull it off with no problem, but it’s unconvincing and unpalatable to say the least. Please bring back Sitamahalakshmi from Godavari – or anyone else for that matter, but this!

The comedy is overshadowed by industrial quantities of melodrama and sentiment, and just doesn’t click. One memorable leitmotif is the appearance of this hulking goon-like figure who keeps butting into most scenes involving the brothers with dire announcements and predictions, delivered a la the ‘crime’ reporters who do those crime shows on TV channels. He’s the only person who consistently draws laughs.

So we basically have a very ho-hum movie, too long and too melodramatic, not funny enough, and a waste of the talents of Kamalini Mukherjee especially and Naresh to a lesser extent. Will probably do well for Naresh’s niche audience – everyone else can quietly forget that something like this ever happened.