Happy Birthday Review

What's Behind

Lavanya Tripathi's Happy Birthday increased interest with the unique title and also as it is directed by Ritesh Rana of Mathu Vadalara fame. The film hit the screens today and let us see whether Happy Birthday offered any happiness to movie lovers.

Story review

In a futuristic country Zindia, Defence Minister Rithwik Sodhi (Vennela Kishore) amends the Guns Law. At the same time, Happy (Lavanya Tripathi) enters a pub at Ritz Grand to celebrate her birthday and with guns blazing everywhere, her best-laid plans turn upside down. To find out the twists and turns and how they are connected to Max Pain (Satya), Lucky (Naresh Agastya),Gunda (Rahul Ramakrishna), Uncle Fixit (Gundu Sudarshan), William (Getup Seenu), and others (Harsha Chemudu and Vidyullekha Raman), watch Happy Birthday in theatres.

Artists, Technicians review

Lavanya Tripathi tried her best to carry the film on her shoulders. She is ok with her performance but failed to impress with her looks. She looked odd and even her dialogues and expressions looked artificial and forced. Vennela Kishore starts the proceedings and he quickly makes an impact and he created fun with his dialogues and mannerisms. Satya and Rahul Ramakrishna too at times evoked a few laughs. Others like Gundu Sudarshan, Getup Seenu, Raviteja, Vidyullekha Raman, and Harsha Chemudu tested the patience of the viewers.

Director Ritesh Rana decided to generate fun and attract viewers by creating a laughing riot with a story in a fictitious country and city. He starts off the narration in an interesting manner but quickly loses the plot concentrating on chapter-wise narration to generate interest and also highlight comedy instead of coming up with a powerful and meaningful story. Though his idea of the futuristic world increases curiosity, once viewers enter the world, there is nothing extraordinary about it. Everything turns ordinary and routine and everything boils down to the director including comedy scenes for the sake of it in patches rather than flowing naturally as the narration progresses.

The uneven narration, artificial emotions, and silly execution resulted in the story, screenplay, and direction going for a toss. The first half after an interesting start slows down with the introduction of various characters and finally ends in an interesting manner. But the entire second half ends up only testing the patience of the viewers and one gets a feeling that the director ran out of ideas.

Kaala Bhairava failed to make an impact with his music. None of his songs are appealing or attractive. They failed to touch the soul of the listeners. However, his background score is fine. The cinematography of Suresh Sarangam gave a rich feel with good visuals. He gave life to the director's fictitious country and city. Karthika Srinivas failed with the editing. There are many drags in the film which affected the final output. Production values are good.

Advantages

Some comedy scenes

Disadvantages

Everything

Story,Screenplay,Direction

Editing

Rating Analysis

Lavanya Tripathi dreamed of coming to all guns blazing with Happy Birthday teaming with Ritesh Rana. Despite her best efforts, Lavanya failed to make an impact as Ritesh Rana's story turned out to be below average and the screenplay and direction did not make any impact. Even Lavanya's role did not inspire any confidence as it is weakly eked out and dialogues turned out to be pretty ordinary. Except for a few hilarious dialogues which appeared every 15 minutes or so, the film offered nothing. Considering all these points, CJ goes with a 1.75 rating for Happy Birthday as it is bereft of happiness.