Pavan Sadineni’s Savitri (2016) Movie Review

Pavan Sadineni’s Savitri (2016) Movie Review

Movie Review: Savitri
Cast: Nara Rohit, Posani Krishna Murali, Nanditha, Murali Sharma, Ajay, Ravi Babu, Jeeva, Vennela Kishore, Satyam Rajesh, Srimukhi and Dhanya Balakrishnan.
Dialogues by Krishna Chaitanya, Screenplay and Direction by Pavan Sadineni, Music By Shravan, Cinematography by A Vasanth and Edited by Goutham Nerusu.
Censor Certificate: U and Runtime: 128 Minutes.

Gayatri (Dhanya Balakrishnan), the elder daughter of Murali sharma tries to run away from her home moments before her arranged marriage and believing her aunt words that Savitri (Nanditha Raj) will not get marriage proposals if her sister forsakes her in this fashion. Then Savitri helps father to crack down Gayatri’s location and get married. Then family sets Savitri’s marriage with their family friend. In this process they leave to Shiridi to thank god, and Rishi (Nara Rohit) loses his heart out to Village lass takes extra interest in teasing her. But being a heroine, Savitri is not the one to give in easily to Rishi’s pranks. At these circumstances like the Savitri missing the train and Rishi returning to take her back to her relatives paves the way for their coming together. And in a short time, they become good friends and naturally, lovers. The rest of the story is how Nara Rohit tries to become superhero, makes everyone understand his love with civilized and uncivilized ways.

Pavan Sadineni’s earlier film Prema Ishq Kadhal was highly acclaimed and has contributed a huge amount of anticipation for this film. The second directorial venture apparently a fresh take on “DDLJ” and follows in the footsteps of the original – but ofcouse with a dash of “Jayam Manadera”, “Arya 2” (Ravi Babu’s character), “Parugu” (Climax Point), “Venkatadri Express”, “Kick”, “Solo” (Convincing the father when marriage was settled), “Nenu Shailaja”, “Nuvve Nuvve” (Final Message) thrown in for good measure. May be he believed that he couldn’t go wrong with such haloed inspiration. The opposite happens…

“Savitri” has been made with slight changes suiting the Telugu belt. But it actually walks on exactly the same pattern followed by Telugu cinema, in which they mix more than 2-3 interesting subplots into one script and have a separate focus planned for both before and after the interval point. The heroine’s marriage obsession and contrast characters surrounding her is promising, her character turns narcissistic as the time passes by, at the mean time hero’s gang starts overacting from the first sequence and one doesn’t get impressed much until we have the train scenes, the film actually makes a decent impact near interval with Nara Rohit’s angle and post interval with few emotional sequences again reminding you of DDLJ, Nuvve Nuvve and Parugu along with a lengthy duration which could have been shortened by at least 15 minutes.

Musically, Savitri is one high point of the film and Shravan has certainly emerged as a talented composer. Three songs – “Anaganaga“, “Chitramainadi” and “Fly Like A Bird” are sure to impress audiences. A Vasanth’s camera work is top class. But Shravan’s background music composition could have been a little better, and the songs have been choreographed well. The Editing on the other hand could have been crispier as the second half rambles along at snail’s pace. Krishna Chaitanya didn’t live up to his standards in dialogues category. Production Values “Vision Film Makers” are appropriate.

The lead actor Nara Rohit doesn’t seem interested in the proceedings and sleep walks through the frames.  For a role like this, a lead need to be completely fit and look stylish, but Nara Rohit completely fails to do so. Nanditha Raj looks pretty in some specific scenes only to put it honestly. Dhanya Balakrishnan proves she can be good in traditional attire as well. Srimukhi does an okay job as an actor and Madhoo supports her character decently. Among the character artists its Murali Sharma, Ajay and Posani Krishna Murali who fare well in their limited characterizations. The comedy of Prabhas Seenu, Ravi Babu, Fish Venkat and Jeeva may appeal to few front benchers, but the so-called mass audiences have already moved from the family oriented comedy.

“Savitri” does not boasts of an offbeat story. It joins the long list of films that had a lot of potential but could not live up to it. A few comedy scenes and witty lines don’t make a good film. In the end, it just left one feeling tired. Not what you expect from a frothy family drama.

Theatrical Trailer: