Mouna Raagam Review ... old story

Film: Mouna Raagam
Rating: 2.5/5
Banner: Sri Saideva ProductionsCast: Tanish, Madhurima, Suhasini, Venu, Chandramohan, M S, Ali, Jeeva, AVS, Dharmavarapu, Hema, Madhavi and others
Music: S A Rajkumar
Cinematography: Shaman Mitru
Editing: Goutham Raju
Story, screenplay, direction: Vijay BalajiProducers: N V Prasad, S. Naga Ashok Kumar
Release date: 08/04/2010

The childhood actor turned hero Tanish and the stunningly beautiful Madhurima have paired up for this new romantic tale. How deep was it and whether it will appeal or not let us see.

Story:
Chandu (Tanish) is in deep love with his maradalu Kaveri (Suhasini) and does many sacrifices for her since childhood. She grows up, gets a job but dumps Chandu because of his poor status. In between this comes Sandhya (Madhurima) who has got a flashback of her own and she stays with Chandu due to unavoidable circumstances. When Chandu is shattered due to Kaveri’s words, Sandhya gives him strength and together they decide to beat the odds in life. Whether they are successful or not forms the rest of the story.

Performances:
Tanish has emoted well at many places and fits the role to gain sympathy but then he has to improvise on his dubbing. The voice still sounds childish; Tanish must modulate it and make it sound like a man’s voice.

Madhurima looks absolutely stunning and has a lot of oomph and appeal. Her comfort in front of the camera is also high. All she needs is a break with a big banner and she has bright future.

Suhasini has a very high dose of homely sex appeal and has made good use of her presence.

Venu tried his best to bring few  laughs, Ali was brief, Dharmavarapu had a serious role, M S Narayana was regular, Hema, Ramaprabha, Madhavi and others did their bit as required. The youngster doing the role of Gautam has good personality but not the right kind of looks. Jeeva was effective. Kasi Viswanath came and went.

Analysis:
There was a bike sentient in the movie ‘Ride’ that brought success for Tanish. Now there is bike concept in this movie’s script as well (with heroine Madurima’s character) and that might have inspired Tanish to some extent to sign on this film.

The film is more of a ‘pulisina perugu’ theme. The director realizes the importance of sentiment and heart feeling and refers it as Curd rice. Undoubtedly, he was right in that and he gets that on the screen through one of his character but then he must realize that the curd has to be fresh and not 3-4 days old.

Looking at the film, one gets a feeling of the late 90s. We have seen that in movies like ‘Raja’ and the other one with Srikanth and Soundarya. Secondly, the film was dragged at unwanted places due to which the feel at the right scene got missed.

For instance, the climax scene where the bike is launched, it looks like a sentimental skit of entertainment before the real program begins. It doesn’t fit the climax part and loses momentum.

Overall, the film was good at few places and had a message to convey but the depth was missing in it. Lyrics were good, cinematography was ok, dialogues were plain, screenplay was average. Commercially, the presence of Madhurima will pull some crowds and few sequences will touch few young hearts but overall, it will require a great deal of publicity to take it to the success mark.



Bottom line – Not exciting