Pilla Rakshasi Review

Pilla Rakshasi Review, What’s Behind: Super successful ‘Bichagadu’ made Chadalavada Padmavathi a star producer and here comes their next dubbing flick ‘Pilla Rakshasi’ starring Baby Sara Arjun in title role. Let’s get into actual review part. 

Pilla Rakshasi Story: Tiny tot Ananya (Baby Sara Arjun) studying in 4th standards makes a happy living with doctor parents. Innocent and plain minded Ananya gets into an unfortunate conflict with P.E.T. Ananya dreaming big to excel in long jump sport is disqualified by P.E.T on personal grudge. Here comes a small time crook Gongalipurugu Gireesh (Sunny Wayne) into Ananya’s life making a big difference.  What kind of positive and good happenings for Ananya made her to reach the goal is rest.

Pilla Rakshasi Artists and Technicians: Pilla Rakshasi is purely character driven film with wafer thin storyline. This is a true children’s movie with screenplay from Midhun Manuel Thomas centered on child psychology and their simple emotions. Despite there are errors in character designing, numerous feel good moments weaved on Sara and remaining characters gently sooth our heart. So, ‘Pilla Rakshasi’ is definitely a light hearted entertainer identifiable with every school going kid back at our home. Direction from Midhun Manuel Thomas is also delicate, concentrated on minute aspects in keeping the narration as tight as possible. Bhasha Sri’s dialogue writing helped to large extent in copying the original flavor from Malayalam to Telugu. Vishnu Sharma’s camera work is so good while Lijo Paul’s editing lacked in grace at crucial instances. Sooraj Kurup’s background score is nice and appropriately designed. Production standards from Chadalavada Padmavathi and Goodwill Entertainments are wonderful.

Onto performances, Baby Sara is cute and expressive. She stays long haunting in our thoughts even after the end. Such is the magical screen presence she showed. When every character in the movie sprouts from Baby Sara’s basic plot, her importance can be understood. Sunny Wayne does a decent job as fraudster. Comedy portions between Sunny Wayne, his side kick and the actor who has done Baby are hilariously presented. Artists who have done Baby Sara’s parents are authentic. Dulquer Salman’s angel cameo is well designed.

Pilla Rakshasi Advantages:

Basic Storyline

Semi Realistic Treatment

Baby Sara

Feel Good Emotions

Climax

Dulquer Salman Cameo

Music

Cinematography

Pilla Rakshasi Drawbacks:

Extremely Slow Paced (at times)

Missing Telugu Faces

Inconsistent Narration

Screenplay Loopholes

Pilla Rakshasi Rating Analysis: Parents are first teachers and inspirational heroes for children. Every kid grows looking at surroundings with various influential factors playing in their mind. Midhun Manuel Thomas caught a generalized theme to connect with every household. Without lacing excessive cinematic liberties, whole story within a limited contemporary premise is told hilariously, seriously and touchingly. However, Pilla Rakshasi title is a misnomer because never Baby Sara behaved in essence with title.  

Taking us directly into Ananya’s life, the adorable yet irresponsible parents are also joined into story. Then comes Ananya’s school atmosphere and the bizarre happenings with P.E.T where the troubles actually begin. In parallel, fraudster Gireesh and his sidekick although tediously introduced but provided enough comedy in sync with core content. Especially, Gireesh and P.E.T fight is a laughter riot. 

Into second half, the storytelling gets seriously emotional as Ananya’s sufferings pain us. Entry of Baby in interval is well worked in second half with subtle and quirky humor. Later, Ananya’s trip to top of hill and Dulquer coming as surprise angel takes film to next level. Pre climax and climax are although a routine fare yet a captivating background score and slow motion shots are endearing.

All in all, ‘Pilla Rakshasi’ is a package relatable to children. A bit of aggression in screenplay could have made this one more memorable dubbing flick like Bichagadu yet CJ goes with 2.5 stars for terrific performance from Baby Sara with fair humor, messaging, good number of enjoyable moments, worth a one-time watch and lessons to learn for our so called Telugu cinema creative brains.

Pilla Rakshasi Cinejosh Verdict: Light Hearted, Feel Good Entertainer.

                                                 Pilla Rakshasi Cinejosh Rating: 2.5/5.0

                                                                                         Reviewed by Srivaas