Oka Laila Kosam Review

Behind the Movie OLK: Director Vijay Kumar Konda of ‘GJG’ fame is here to direct romantic hero Naga Chaitanya with Pooja Hegde as heroine. Let us see, how far movie can do the magic for Chaitanya’s career?

In the Movie OLK: Story takes off with Graduation Ceremony of Karthik (Naga Chaitanya) who is out on freedom tour of one year with permission of his industrialist father (Suman). During the trip, Karthik falls deeply in love with Nandhana aka Nandu (Pooja Hegde) but could not find any of her details. In the process, Nandu also mistakes Karthik as a spoilt guy and a flirt too. As story proceeds on, Karthik’s father finalizes his marriage with none other than Nandu. Whatsoever, Nandu is not in a position to accept Karthik as her life partner. At the same time, she also could not disappoint her father’s (Sayaji Shinde) selection. How Karthik dealt the situation with his maiden book ‘Oka Laila Kosam’ published and how differences between the two are bridged is final climax.

Values of the Movie OLK: Yet again, this is a pure screenplay based movie with lot of treatment and polish needed to convince the audience. Vijay Kumar Konda’s story is wafer thin and he was driving on knife edge throughout the narration. A story which needed strong elements to establish a bond of love and sense of Karthik’s desire towards Nandu are dumbly handled. This is big drawback from Vijay Konda on the part of Karthik’s characterization. In the same grove, Nandu’s reason to hate Karthik so intensely also did not have any reasonable justification. Even with sloppy character construction for main leads, Vijay Kumar Konda took execution forward with plenty of romantic, feel good emotions, here and there a bit of comedy stuff. On writing part, Vijay Konda showed lot of maturity. I Andrew’s camera work is a cool cucumber keeping the viewers unstrained. Praveen Pudi’s editing is also smooth. Good song compositions of Anup Rubens are well presented on screen. Production values of Annapurna Studios are also decent.

On performance front, Naga Chaitanya exhibited tons of improvement. His comic timing in confusion episodes was good. However, he wasn’t poignant in dances. Styling wise, this is best for Chaitu in recent times. Pooja Hedge is a demonstrative beauty with artistic facial features. She looked gorgeous in many scenes with eloquent portrayal of emotions. Among the rest Ali’s comedy was good in portions while Suman, Sayaji Shinde, Rohini, Sudha were typical. Rest of the casting like Deeksha Panth, Srinivas Reddy, Raghu Nandan etc were for name sake. 

Out of the Movie OLK: By all luck ‘Oka Laila Kosam’ is a far good film for Chaitu compared to his last few failures. Although there is inconsistency, uselessness, unmeaning and inappropriate episodes placed one by one to fill complete run time, Vijay Kumar Konda could not consolidate them properly into core theme. Above all, the way climax was dealt has become a savior nullifying many mistakes. Second half is comparatively a better show than dawdling first half with an interesting interval block. Pooja Hegde, Anup Rubens are other bright elements. 

Opening the lock in very initial episodes, Vikay Konda took to the challenge of dealing the predictability in story with his sharpness in screenplay. However, he could not add any strength and comedy quotient in script giving an abrupt ending even for many characters. Reason is Vijay Konda wasn’t at his best of flow with missing of ‘GJG’ writer and script doctor Harshavardhan. Anyways, ‘OLK’ is a one time watch for Naga Chaitanya, Pooja Hegde.

Cinejosh Verdict of OLK: Decently Romantic With Heartfelt Climax.

                                                         Cinejosh Rating: 3/5

                                                                                Reviewed by Srivaas