Adikeshava(Telugu,Netflix)
Starring Vaisshnav Tej, Sreeleela, Joju George
Directed by Srikanth N Reddy
Rating: ** ½
Junkfood may not be the ideal ally for your tummy. But it sure as hell tastes good as long as it lasts. I know Adikeshava has not been liked much by either the critics or the audience. But look closer…or do I mean,son’t look too closely…There is a distinct element of tongue-in-cheekiness about the way the writer-director Srikanth Reddy sets up the plot.
The mother-son relationship, for example. Just imagine a more sane and sensible version of what Ramya Krishna and Vijay Deverakonda did in(shudder!) Liger and you have Radhika Saradh Kumar and Vaisshnav Tej in Adikeshava.
Leading man Vaisshnav Tej has an amiable screen presence. But it is the much talked-about Sreeleela who holds you attention. She is supple on her feet, nimble on her toes and has a sparkling screen presence. What is Bollywood waiting for?
Regrettably Sreeleela gets completely sidelined once the action kicks in. The first and second half,the breezy and burdensome halves, are like two different films, both incurably silly, but the first-half is fun while the second half with its gruesome sledgehammer violence is just a dreary slog.
Recent films have taken time off from the main plot to stage the climactic fights as an autonomous feast to eliminate the beast. Here the villain is played by the very talented Malayalam actor Joju George,struggling to be so evil he ends up treading the trope’s hill and sliding down with nothing to hold on to except his individual talent.
Joju’s Chenga Reddy doesn’t think twice before brutally slaying anyone who has even the slightest query about working in the quarry. Little children are cooped up and suffocated in the mines. There is a particularly ghoulish moment in the orgy of mayhem when Sreeleela finds something to do: apply nail polish on a dead little girl while everyone around bawls and weeps in ritualistic show of grief.
The above sequence qualifies as the weirdest concession to sentimentality since Man invented the camera. While we are on the subject of obnoxious sentimentality, the hero’s transition from one parenting position in the first- half to the second, is achieved with all the grace of a ballerina with a fractured knee.
Like all potboilers, Adikeshava revels in absurdities right down to the end revelation(which in itself,is a bit of a playful plotting conceit). I would like to see the lead pair in a love story denuded of the topheavy action. You can’t top a pizza with mutton helpings.
