Rating: **
Once the most promising star-actor in Telugu cinema, THE Vijay Devarakonda(that’s how he addresses himself) seems to have plunged into an abyss of narcissism, which worked well for his self-obsessed character in his career-defining film Arjun Reddy.
But you can’t be in every frame (well, almost) in a purported family film even if you are the, ahem, Family Star, what that ‘memes’.
THE Vijay Devarakonda playing an ambitious wannabe tycoon seems to be as ubiquitous in this vapid family fare as Rajinikanth usually is in his films. While Rajini’s omnipresence works for his fansTHE Devarakonda just doesn’t fit the grill.
He tries hard. We see him doing a humorous slab with his friend-sidekick played by everyone’s friend-sidekick Vennela Kishore. He is also the “cool” family man, you know the kind that Shah Rukh Khan played in Karan Johar’s Kuch Kuch Hota Hai bonding with the buzurgs and the bachchas with cuteness overloaded. It works for SRK. VD seems to be faking it.
Some of the supporting cast is spirited and contagious in their eagerness to look like part of the film’s family values. But the leading man’s narcissism brings down the familial equity. Potentially promising perky scenes and sequence are constantly downsized by the hero’s insistence on having the last word, thereby reducing the family to blur in this blah binge.
Director Parasuram had earlier worked a far more arresting alchemy with Devarakonda in Geetha Govindam, a surprisingly lowkey libido-teaser, it whipped up a frothy fun ambience through a chance encounter between a virginal college lecturer and a rather stiff upper-lipped Miss Hoity-toity. That the two roles were played by Vijay Devarakonda and Rashmika Mandanna was a dash of destiny doing its devilish bit to add spice to this honeyed though never over-sweetened confection of love during times of wedding festivities and carnal urges.
What I had really liked about Geetha Govindam was its feisty take on gender equations . The guileless guy Vijay Govinda(Devarakonda) and the uppity girl Geetha(Rashmika Mandanna) get close during a bus journey to a wedding that changes their destiny.
Devarakonda and Mandanna shared vivacious vibes in Geetha Govindam. In The Family Star there is zero chemistry between Devarakonda and Mrunal Thakur ; and it is not her fault. What can she do when the hero seems more in love with himself more than anyone else?
The best that can be said about The Family Star is that it is marginally better than VD’s last release Kushi which unknowingly lampooned, Kashmir, Kashmiri militancy and inter-cultural marriages. The Family Star insults no one and nothing except the expectations VD’s fans have of him.
