Natural Star Nani is on a golden patch with continuous hits. This time he is here to entertain us as Krishna and Arjun in Merlapaka Gandhi direction starring Anupama Parameshwaran, Rukshar Mir as heroines with Hip Hop Tamizha music. Let us see, how good KAY is in the following review.
Krishna and Arjun (Nani) are two identical guys living in two different parts of world. While Krishna is innocent and funny guy in Chittoor district trying to find a girl to fall in love, Arjun is a Casanova rock star in Prague who flirts with numerous girls. It’s time for Krishna to romance Riya (Rukshar Mir) and Arjun’s sincere love for Subba Lakshmi (Anupama Parameshwaran). As the romantic roller coaster ride goes on, both love tracks crisscross as Riya and Subba Lakshmi land in Hyderabad only to get kidnapped. How Krishna and Arjun fight against a criminal woman trafficking mafia is rest.
Krishnarjuna Yuddham hasn’t got that olden type of Krishna and Arjuna at war kind of parallelism to draw. In contrast, this new KAY is a combined war waged by Krishna and Arjun to rescue their love interests. So, story wise there is something to work but screenplay went on wrong lines. Merlapaka Gandhi’s ease at penning and handling funny situations is predominantly anchored in Krishna’s character and Chittoor accent dialogues while Arjun’s rock star character misfired miserably. Neither looks nor body language, Gandhi showed Nani in a poor light and Nani is a complete mismatch in this poorly written script. However, Gandhi understood the stumbling block in his script and tried to run his narrative more on Krishna which led to an imbalanced direction as second half went completely haywire.
Karthik Ghattamaneni’s camera work appeared good projecting the rural Chittoor atmosphere and urban Prague culture in contrasting lights. Sathya G’s editing needed lot more sharpness in keeping the second half on run. Music by Hip Hop Tamizha is highlighted on one hit folk song Dummu Choodu Daari Choodu while background is just acceptable. Production standards from Shine Screens are too good.
About artists, Nani stood right choice for Krishna though he played similar roles many a times in past. His Chittoor dialect is an instant connect which oozed life into few hilarious scenes during first half. Nani never got in sync with Arjun. Every bit of Prague episodes sunk down. Anupama Parameshwaran is good at looks. Rukshar Mir is just fine. Unfortunately both of them are wasted in poorly written love tracks. Slapstick comedy by Sudarshan and Fun Bucket batch is ok. Nagineedu, Pooja Ramachadran and others did their part.
Nani as Krishna
Comedy
Folk Song
Screenplay
Direction
Weak Conflict
Second Half
Placement Of Songs
Missing Emotion
Given the terrific form of Nani, audience expect minimum guarantee entertainment in his best suitable characterizations. However, Nani seems to have bitten by mass and action bug from long back. In his unending journey to ascend the new level of mass stardom as action hero, Nani is falling back every time. KAY fits exactly into the same frame. Nani is too good to pass our time as Krishna till the moment he elevates the enjoyment quotient in Chittoor slang and the moment he transforms into serious mode beating the goons black and blue, believability goes for a toss like the screenplay. Had Gandhi focused on generating light hearted humor in latter portions without touching the trafficking issue in action backdrop, KAY could have been better standing tall to Nani’s forte!
First half begins with Gandhi sowing the seeds of trafficking early on. Then Krishna and his rural batch arrive sprinkling the comedy. On other side, playboy Arjun in Prague just wasted time. Without registering any conflict, story runs on and on with two love tracks of Nani-Anupama and Nani-Rushkar before going for interval block.
With conflict opened very late, screenplay mandatorily has to be very sharp for action to run in second half. With Express Raja kind of hit to credit, Gandhi should have relied on adding certain logics to chase the crime. But, pale action and misplaced songs made second half a very poor stuff concentrating on action shade of Nani.
All in all, KAY is improper selection from Nani. Though film had few entertaining moments around Krishna, its Arjun spoiled the show in weak direction from Gandhi. CJ rates the film with 2.5 stars and awaits for commercial output to speak the rest.