Sukumarudu Review

Behind the Movie Sukumarudu: Young hero Aadi growing big with each film has teamed with director G. Ashok of ‘Pilla Zamindar’ fame. Music by Anup Rubens is already a hit. Let us see how this combination of A-A-A worked out?

In the Movie Sukumarudu: Young guy Sukumar called as Sukku (Aadi) working as Software Employee in Overseas is a practical man dreaming to grow big by establishing his own company without the any assistance from his dad (Sanjay Swaroop). In fact, Sukku does not believe in Human Relations and Family Emotions. In order to fulfill the surety requirements of Bank to get his loan sanctioned for starting own company, Sukku lands in an India village where his widowed maternal grand mother Vardhanamma (Sarada) lives with property of worth Rs.150 Crores. 

Sukku comes in with a motive to inherit the property from innocent Vardhanamma. How did Sankari (Nisha Agarwal), the flashback of Sukku’s grand father Achyutha Ramaiah (Super Star Krishna), entire village, near and dear ones made Sukku to realize the real value of Human Relations form the rest!

Values of the Movie Sukumarudu: Basic skeleton of ‘Sukumarudu’ matches exactly with last week release of ‘Greekuveerudu’ but span, orientation and treatment differed here. Director Ashok G is clearly a man with over-flowing creative stuff. The kind of screenplay and treatment selected by Ashok is new and distinctive resembling with the shades of Bapu and Jandhyala. However, he is just half passed in presenting the same hard efforts on-screen. Screenplay became baffling with plenty of characters and numerous threads used for substantiating the main-plot. Writer Chandrasekhar penned heart-touching lines elevating the emotional moods. While Sai Sreeram’s camera work is appreciative, it is Editor Praveen Pudi needs to be praised for bringing in a 160 minutes lengthy film. Music composed by Anup Rubens is also pleasing. Dance compositions were awesome and Aadi raised the bar enhancing grace in his moves. Production values of Venu Gopal and Sri Soudamini Creations are okay.

Performance wise, Aadi is developing as matured actor with each film. As Sukumarudu, definitely Aadi passed with distinction grade. Graceful dances, emotional expressions, balance in dealing romance cum comedy helped audience to recognize Aadi as new Star Hero on evolve. For the first time, even Nisha Agarwal appeared beautiful in traditional belle costumes. Bhavana also did a better job in small role. Next to steal the show is Uravashi Sharada as highly valued old Grand Ma who has no idea on current selfish society where Money rules the relations. Supporting Sharada every time on screen is Rao Ramesh, for whom this is a cake-walk. Krishna did a meaningful cameo. 

Rest is about Avasarala Srinivas, Chandra Mohan, Dhanraj, Chanti, Thaagubothu Ramesh, Nalla Venu, Raghu, Tanikella Bharani, Jaya Prakash Reddy, Raghu Babu, Gollapudi, Sanjay Swaroop, Vennela Kishore, Jyothi etc had purposeful characters mixed and connected with main run of story. 

Out of the Movie Sukumarudu: In present generation where only and only Comedy became synonymous to the term of Entertainment, good to see some of our directors spreading more focus on Human Relations (HR) generating the delicate feel in joy of giving. Lamentably, Ashok G who proved to be a master businessman in playing with mental state of common Telugu audience in ‘Pilla Zamindar’ has diluted a similar heart touching concept in ‘Sukumarudu’ by handling plenty of threads and sub-threads at a time. Instead of dealing those many numbers of threads, it would have been better if Ashok took only few and weaved more conviction into them thus decreasing the run time.    

With innumerable characters carrying the sub-plots arriving each for every five minutes, crowds in theatre are left confused. No matter, how great might be a writer in Ashok and his brother Chandrasekhar but a movie is meant to be bounded in less than two and half hours, based on Tollywood film making principles. Writing different tracks for Sanjay Swaroop, Krishna, Tanikella, Jaya Prakash Reddy, Nisha agarwal, Chandra Mohan, Raghu Babu, friends’ batch of Avasarala Srinivas and all of them hitched to main plot of Aadi was a tedious job and presenting the same on screen is a much more dried task. Danger of audience losing their concentration with a feel of monotony creeping in has turned true for ‘Sukumarudu.’

A project of this scale demands at least two intervals and four climaxes. Director Ashok G is abundant in content and he is still left with one or other line to say before ‘The End’ titles roll on. Literally, he tested the patience and played with endurance of Telugu viewers. Never in recent time had we seen a film like ‘Sukumarudu’ which seems to have thrown Editor Praveen Pudi in bewilderment. Constrained to wrap up the final product in less than 130 or 140 minutes, he ended with 160 minutes final copy which is non-synchronized. Crucial links in narration goes missing and Editor needs to be blamed. However, his helplessness can also be understood because Ashok G might have flooded the Editor with extensive raw footage. Even then, he maintained the pace changing scenes at constant acceleration without dragging the boredom. Ashok engaged us primarily using nativity and big bunch of artists filling the screen.  

For those senior category creative audiences who have enough composure to bear the humility of watching prolonged movies, ‘Sukumarudu’ can serve the deal. For crisp, fun loving and just fun oriented movie lovers, this will drain all your energies. Commercial success of ‘Sukumarudu’ depends more on how B & C center audience respond because there are good chances of Metro and NRI Telugu public hooking up with these concepts. 

Cinejosh Verdict of the Movie Sukumarudu: A Lengthy Tale on HR (Human Relations).

                                                     Cinejosh Rating: 2.5/5

                                                               Reviewed by Srivaas