Madhura Sreedhar’s Back Bench Student (2013) Movie Review

Director Madhura Sreedhar Reddy came into the limelight with Sneha Geetham. He also made its My Love Story last year. Both films were made with new actors. His third film Back Bench Student starring Mahat Raghavendra (Mankatha fame), Piaa Bajpai (of Rangam fame) and Archana Kavi which is releasing today (March 15th). Let’s check out my review for more details..

Priyanka (Archana Kavi) who is doing Masters in Engineering in US, returns back to India in the midst of her course, unable to forget her love life with Karthik (Mahat Raghavendra) her friend during her engineering days. She recollects how she left him in lurch just because he failed in sixteen subjects and the hard reality that she is unable to forget him.

She meets him after one year and finds to her surprise that he is drawing a pay pack of Rs one lakh per month as a expert hacker and networking specialist and a new girl Chaitra (Pia Bajpai) in his life. Now who is loving whom, forms the rest of the story line.

Mahat is okay in this film. But there is something terribly wrong with his expressions and dubbing. The voice didn’t sync with the expressions of Mahat and it sounded awkward. Both the actresses (Pia Bajpai & Archana Kavi) are pretty cute. But, they lack spontaneity in their expressions and naturalness in body language. Bhramanandam failed to make any impact. Rest of the cast did their job accordingly.

The basic storyline of the film is about a back bench student who has been left with many backlogs and a break up story after 4 years of engineering. Though this film recalls us of Ranbir Kapoor’s Wake Up Sid, you get a feeling like watching a Tamil dubbed film. Instead of concentrating on the narration of the story, the director went for inserting forced comedy/Love/Kiss scenes to target the teens.

Madhura Sreedhar failed to make any impact on viewers with his script or storyline. He failed as director and screenplay tested the patience of the people. Performance of the lead pair is the big letdown in the film.

The music of Back Bench Student, composed by Sunil Kashyap, is good. Especially Jagada Jagada song picturization deserves a special mention. The background music is loud. Rerecording is dreadful. Prasad G.K.’s camera work is mediocre. Editing (Dharmendra Kakarala) of the film is not sharp. Dialogues are very boring except for a few occasional lines like “veedu chaduvu raka kadu Chaduvu koka fail ayyadu…”.

Survi Verdict: Back Bench Student a badly made movie. Back Bench Student starts off pretty well and things continue to remain okay during the first thirty minutes or so. But then, problems begin and the second half is a mishmash of sequences, which are unconvincing and often, silly. It needs tremendous expertise to deal with sensitive wafer-thin story lines like these. Madhura Sreedhar failed to narrate the film in an engaging style.

Theatrical Trailer: