Rajugari Kodipulao directed by Shiva Kona is releasing on 4 August 2023. The film is attracting the attention of all with the interesting and appealing title. The film's teaser and trailer got good response and the film's OTT rights are yet to be inked. The OTT streaming will be after the completion of its theatrical run. Let us find out how tasty is Rajugari Kodipulao.
Rajugari Kodipulao story is all about three couples going on trekking and experiencing weird and shocking happenings. Badri ( Kunal Kaushik) and Aakanksha (Neha Deshpande) share a troubled relationship. They plan a trip with close friends Danny ( Shiva Kona) , Candy(Prachi Thaker), Farooq( Abhilash Bhandari), Eesha( Ramya Dinesh) but Aakanksha's daughter warns her against the trip sharing her about the horrific dream. What is that dream, what experiences the there couple undergo in the forest and what is the no connection to Rajugaru (Prabhakar) Kodi pulao is the crux of the story.
Kunal Kaushik and Neha Deshpande prevented the roles of couple in troubled relation quite well. They showed good expressions and emotions and their screen presence is good. While Kunal Kaushik showed his attitude, Neha Deshpande showed her feelings.
Ramya Dinesh did well as a workaholic boss who shows attitude as she graduates from IIT. Abhilash Bhandari is good in the role of Ramya's husband. Shiva Kona and Prachi Thaker did well as a couple who are immensely in love. The relation between Abhilash and Neha is shown well and the same with Shiva Kona and Prachi Thaker. Others performed accordingly.
Among all of them Shiva Kona stole the show with his expressions and emotions. He showed good variations and also surprises with his mannerisms.
Rajugari Kodipulao story by Shiva Kona has many surprises. Shiva Kona and the makers promoted the film as a family entertainer but it is completely different. Shiva starts the narration in an interesting manner and maintains the same tempo throughout the internal bang blending the proceedings with extra marital affairs and unforeseen happenings in the dense forest. This sets the tone for an exciting and thrilling second half.
But Shiva Kona loses steam when it mattered the most during the flashback and the pre climax and climax scenes. After a decent First Half, he disappointed with mediocre second half playing to the galleries adding adult content and obscene dialogues. Wonder how the censor board passed that Dialogues with out cuts. Shiva Kona came with an interesting story and managed to come with good Screenplay for most of the part only to fumble in the final stages.
The music of Pravin Mani is good and made an impact with his background music. Pawan Guntuku's cinematography is beautiful and he captured the natural locations in an appealing and attractive manner. Shiva Kona's editing is ok in the first half and could have been better in the second half. Production values of AMF, Kona Cinema banners are good.
Altogether, Rajugari Kodipulao is an average thriller. Shiva Kona did multi tasking, not only writing, directing and producing the film but also played an important role.
He did well as a writer and director and excelled as an actor. He however couldn't succeed as the editor and one gets a feeling that he got blinded due to his love for his story.
Overall, Shiva Kona did a decent job and a little bit of fine-tuning of the story and script and reworking on the second half would have helped the film. Considering all these aspects, Cinejosh goes with a 2.25 Rating for Rajugari Kodipulao.