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Story
There is a village called Adavipalli in the midst of the jungle
where the land is having lot of ores. Since it is located
between two hills, the government wanted to construct a railway
bridge to gap the commutation and make the transfer of goods
easier.
In
that jungle, there lives a man-eating lion. The latest victim
of lions havoc is the death of the chief engineer who is constructing
the rail bridge. The Railway department asks Aishwarya (Simran)
to go on the mission of constructing the bridge.
Even
after Aishwarya resumes the duty, Lion starts terrorizing
the crew of the construction team. The ace hunter of Adavipalli,
Raju (Chiru), is entrusted with the job of hunting the lion.
The rest of the first half is all about how Raju traps the
lion and kill it at the cost of Appanna Dora (Nagababu). But,
the other lion in the jungle gets enraged at Raju for killing
its companion. There is another trouble for the bridge project
in the form of forest ranger (Surya) and a local smuggler
(Ramireddy). Raju gets rid of these two goons by the interval.
Then the viewers are revealed that Aishwarya is the wife of
Raju.
In
the second half, the flashback is revealed. Raju comes to
city to participate in the crafts mela to sell his herbs from
the jungle. There he meets Aishwarya, who is come to visit
a fun stall along with his fiancée Vicky (Raja Ravindra).
When Aishwarya tries to take a shot at shooting the balloon,
Vicky disappoints her saying that she cannot do it. Raju,
who is an onlooker comes forwards and gives her confidence
and tips to shoot. Then Aishwarya's bullet hits the bull's
eye. Impressed with Raju's help, she invites him to come to
her engagement. At the engagement, Raju spots Vicky flirting
with another girl and tells him about the importance of being
a good human being. Aishwarya watches the entire episode from
the behind and she decides that Raju is a loyal man compared
to the flirtatious Vicky. And she seeks for Raju's hand and
then they get married. The father of Aishwarya cunningly separates
the couple by creating misunderstandings.
The
rest of the film is about how the hunter Raju and engineer
Aishwarya sort out the matters and complete the construction
of the bridge.
Performances
Artists:
Chiru:
first half of the film does not have more scope for performance,
as there are only a few scenes between Chiru and Simran and
his pranks. But in the flashback, Chiru did a fine act. His
dances, as usual, are the best.
Simran:
Simran's character here got a few shades that of her Yuvaraju
character, which is also happens to be the mother of a kid.
She did her bit with finesse.
Sanghvi:
She did a trivial role in this film, which does not help her
anyway to get more projects as Asha Saini is taking the center
stage as the second heroine in today's Telugu cinema.
Other
departments:
Story:
This story is a straight lift from 'Ghost and the Darkness'.
Unfortunately, this secret was leaked to the press way back
in February of 2000. And the opportunists tried to cash in
by buying the remake rights of 'Ghost and the Darkness' and
threatened to release the remake two days before Mrigarju.
As the story is simple and straight and do not justify the
movie's length of 2 and half hours, a flashback story was
created to fill in one hour. The original originator of this
inspired story was Jayant. He was roped in to make a film
for Devi films in December 1998. But he was swapped with Gunasekhar
by Vyjayanti movies, that has planned to do another unofficial
remake of 'An Affair to remember' (Ravoyi Chandamama) with
Nag. Later on Nagababu developed the story line and then Yandamuri
Veerendranath and Satyanand roped in to give the final touches.
The result is a desi 'Ghost and the Darkness'.
Screenplay:
As story is plain and simple, a lot would depend upon screenplay
to make the film gripping and interesting. But Guna Sekhar
failed stitch the scenes in perfect manner. And he tried to
ape the original film in most of the scenes, which resulted
in poor copying as we lack the special FX finesse the Hollywood
boast of.
Direction:
The director is the caption of ship. And Guna Sekhar tried
to steer the ship towards the route of the 'Ghost and Darkness'
rather than by following the wind. Even in 'Vamsi', B Gopal
tried the same thing by getting too much inspired by the original
and ignoring the basics. This movie does not have any drawbacks
if you look from an average viewer point of view. But it definitely
lacks what a typical Telugu cinema viewer looks for.
Production:
Devi Vara Prasad needs to be commended for the kind of confidence
he had in project by investing 15 crores. He spent 75 lacs
on a single set for the Hungama song. He spent another 30
lacs to recreate the Amsterdam city in Annapurna studios.
He has taken the entire unit to South Africa to shoot scenes
with lion and then spent a fortune on Pentamedia Graphics
to recreate the some of the lion scene. He had accomplished
his goal of making a rich high budget film with chiru in the
Hollywood standard. But what we have to see is if the Telugu
people are willing to embrace these kinds of films.
Songs:
Like any other movies, songs in this film are as good as the
sequence of the scenes in which they are inserted. Chai song
is the highlight of the film and an absolute treat for eyes
and ears. The next best song is 'Ramayya Paadaletti' in which
he made a superb step that is as good as the one he did in
'Abibi' song of Hitler. Third best is 'Satamana' slow song!
The other songs are routine songs. Mani Sharma did an inferior
job compared his earlier contributions to chiru like Bavagaroo,
Choodalani Vundi, Iddaru Mitrulu and Annayya. Even the background
flavor of the film is of Hollywood genre, which may not be
very appealing for the Telugu viewers.
Camera
Work: Camera work is good. But there are a lot of flaws
in canning the scenes as the jungle is shot in different locations
and it shows up breaking the uniformity of presenting the
feel the jungle. In a few songs the light is dark. Sekhar
V Joseph had done the cinematography for this film.
Dialogues:
Satyanand, who gave dialogues for Annayya has given dialogues
for this film too. He excels in the scenes in which Chiru
does comedy.
Analysis:
As the 60% of the film involves jungle and people may feel
uncomfortable viewing the slow paced Jungle action. Another
drawback of the film is fights. There is only one fight in
the entire film. As the people expect a grandeur climax between
lion and Chiru, Chiru eliminates the lion with one stab. The
initial part of flashback episode is a big relief. This film
is an attempt to make a Hollywood kind of film (that's too
inspired by a Hollywood film) in Andhra Pradesh, which may
suffer the problem of nativity. The box office fate of this
film will be decided in a couple of weeks, though some of
the people started writing off the film on the day one. If
we go by the weight of the film, it may not become a hit.
But this film sports Chiranjeevi, who has the history and
ability of turning the average flicks into blockbusters.
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