'Praja Rajyam' Movie Review

Geetha Arts magnum opus movie produced by Allu Aravind has failed to reach expectations of audience. Here is a brief review of the movie -

Banner: Geetha Arts
Producer: Allu Aravind
Directed by: Mitra
Cast: Chiranjeevi, Pawan Kalyan, Nagendra Babu. (Allu Arjun and Ram Charan guest roles)
Writers: Paruchuri Brothers
Parental Guidance: Some obcene language by Posani and Shobha Rani

Story: The title cards are played for too long with Allu Aravind telling people to wait for the train. Finally the said train arrives and the party is launched in Tirupathi with a solo number by Chiranjeevi.
The initial response in theaters is terrific and the story starts to unfold. The movie gets boring in the first half with no punch dialogues by Chiranjeevi and same old stale lines of Paruchuri Brothers. The dialogue “Ganji Benji” got good response from audience but being a serious movie, the audience were expecting to see some intelligent lines about themselves, not the hero. As we start to doze off listening to the same old cliched lines, things start getting serious when the slums in Bheem Rao wada are vacated by ruling party politicians to build party office.

Interval bang: Pawan Kalyan erects vinyls of ruling party leaders in the middle of road and makes controversial remarks about all of them. Lot of whistles in theater and everybody is back on track.

The movie becomes interesting all of a sudden. Provoked by village ex sarpanch CBN, school teacher Roja makes remarks on Chiranjeevi and Pawan Kalyan. Chiranjeevi’s assistant Shobha Rani and house servant Posani lash out at Roja and she lashes right back at them. Things get real ugly and the village people are surprised by the beautiful language these guys are using to get at each other. Chiranjeevi declines to apologize for the behavior of his assistant. The ex sarpanch is also quite on the issue. Much to the audience’s relief, we have Pawan Kalyan and Renu Desai’s wedding and a brief melody song follows.

After a lot of drama, finally the election dates are announced. As the story proceeds towards climax, we see some twists when friends like Parakala leave the party and start telling everybody that it is not a party but a company owned by Chiranjeevi and Allu Aravind.

There is a side thread running with Allu Arvind playing full fledged detective as opposed to detective’s assistant in Chantabbai. In this movie he is trying to find who the two coverts are. He knows the exact number of coverts but he cannot identify who they are. The character of Allu Arvind is confusing as he does comedy some times saying they will win 292 seats, does drama by challenging dasari to come to Anakapalli and plays the villain to party cadre and hero’s fans of 30 years.

Right before climax, there is confusion as to who is going to stay till the end and who is going to leave the train. Finally the train reaches its destination but realizes that all the compartments are lost on the way. We see the hero walking towards the evening sun when the end title start to roll.

Analysis: The movie started sooraj Barjatya style with promise by Chiranjeevi to keep it a clean entertainer but audience were shocked to see obscenities from artists such as Shobha Rani and Posani.
Rumor has it that director Mitra has left the movie midway and producer Allu finished it.

Artists Performance: Chiranjeevi looked tired and uninterested. Although there were moments where he has shown spark by being different from other actors, he failed deliver a memorable performance. The surprise element of the movie is Pawan Kalyan who sadly disappeared 20 minutes before the climax and his character was ended abruptly. Nagendra Babu has a brief role in the beginning of the movie. Devender Goud is passable. Shobha Rani did some over acting while Padma scored as dignified lady.