Natural Star Nani is on a winning streak. Teaming up with super hit producer Dil Raju, Fidaa heroine Sai Pallavi, musical sensation Devi Sri Prasad and a flop director Sriram Venu hiked the expectations. Let us see, what is this Middle Class Abbayi all about?
Nani (Nani) and his elder brother Rajeev (Rajeev Kanakala) make an emotional middle class family. However, entry of Jyothi (Bhumika Chawla) as Rajeev’s wife and Nani’s Vadina turns the tables around. A goalless Nani misunderstands and dislikes Vadina presuming that she sidelined him from the love of his elder brother. As time passes on, Jyothi being an RTO is transferred to Warangal and Nani is also forced to shift Warangal just to help Vadina. Here Nani meets Pallavi (Sai Pallavi) and love blossoms. In parallel, Jyothi develops rivalry with local illegal transport criminal Vijay (Naresh Vijay) who challenges Nani to kill his Vadina Jyothi in next ten days. Rest is how Nani forms a formidable wall to save his Vadina.
As a basic storyline, penning a complete plot to elaborate the affectionate bond between Vadina-Maridi sounds good and easy to connect with families in typical middle class setup. However, Sriam Venu neither showed a spine in his script nor firm hold on his direction. Resultantly, MCA falls flat on its nose mid way struggling to reach the shore. What really made Dil Raju to take up this doltish project is still a million dollar question and of course, when there’s a bankable in-form star like Nani in lead, even wrong becomes right. This might have happened many times in past but this time hollowness in screenplay failed to rescue the narrative. No where the emotional bondage between so called middle class family members (Nani, Rajeev Kanakala, Bhumika) touches our heart. Instead, the loathsome second half tests our patience as audience fall in a confusion to address MCA as a thriller or family entertainer. Writing part too did its damage as Dil Raju’s trademark missed all over. Sameer Reddy’s camera work is par below mediocrity. Frames clearly appeared to have resembled a B grade film in sync with poverty stricken production standards maintained by Dil Raju. Editing by Prawin Pudi is as defunct as the direction. For the first in recent times, Devi Sri Prasad scored an easily avoidable album and so is his dull background score.
About performances, Nani doesn’t need any new introductions. His fluency at dialogue punching and easy to go body language suited to tee in title role. Conflict point by itself remaining the weakest area, Nani could not push him-self from a particular level. Sai Pallavi is truly discord in heroine character. She should be very cautious falling prey at accepting this kind of characters forgetting her core strengths. Every close frame on Sai Pallavi exposed her drawbacks. Welcome change for Bhumika Chawla to play a full length pivotal role but little more of extracting the expressions could have served the deal. Rajeev Kanakala, Amani, Naresh were just ok. As villain Naresh Vijay is uncomfortable for Telugu audience. Priyadarshi, Shubhalekha Sudhakar, Pavitra Lokesh etc just made their presence.
Nani
Vadina-Maridi Track
First Half
Sai Pallavi
Screenplay
Direction
Second Half
Music
Production Values
Like every film from Dil Raju will mandatorily have a common family emotion to strike chord with audience, MCA too pivots on typical middle class mentality in a popular family template of two brothers and one Vadina. Till those portions Sriram Venu concentrated on exploiting the practical middle class thinking, the fun factor and engagement quotient stood decent in passing the time. When the core conflict of establishing villainy with hero’s family comes on centre stage, entire show buckled. With an open conflict and beaten to death drama, MCA dips to all time low and never came back to life.
First half begins on interestingly thrilling note with Nani narrating the flashback. Introducing us to two brothers Nani, Rajeev Kanakala is though regular, thanks to Nani for oozing the liveliness. Bhumika into the photo frame, Nani’s insecurity and frustration is presented well. Sai Pallavi is in just to fill the half baked romantic track bridging the time space for placement of poorly composed songs. Naresh Vijay’s atrocities are despairingly handled. With boring run-of-the-mill elements, only by interval Nani stands in between Naresh Vijay and Bhumika, there’s one weak goose bump showing the door for interval tea.
For now, the conflict is wide open. Nani is not a mass and action hero but still he needs to keep his Vadina safe from Naresh Vijay because it’s a hero challenge. Two big episodes (gas cylinder and fake phone call) expose the poor degree of intelligence both Dil Raju and Sriram Venu adopted for this cat and mouse game. Songs come-and-go and further disconnects us with main theme. Whatever the illogical drama ripened here was also of no use. As excitement drains off minute by minute, a newly thought climax goes for a full toss to let down.
All in all, MCA is one of the poorly made films from a promising combo of Dil Raju and Nani. Except first 30 minutes of safe play on middle class attitude, rest of the film is torpid and lifeless. CJ goes with 2.25 stars and the film is easily ignorable for the weekend.