Parasuram’s Geetha Govindam (2018) Movie Review

Star Cast: Vijay Devarakonda, Rashmika Mandanna, NIthya Menen, Anu Emmanuel, Rahul Ramakrishna, Subbaraju, and Nagendra Babu.
Music Composed by Gopi Sunder
Cinematography by Manikandan
Directed by Parasuram

Censor Certificate : UA & Runtime: 148 Minutes.

Radha and Krishna are known as the best lovers ever in our mythology. What made them so great? The relationship started with a misunderstanding and ended up as a beautiful memory to them and the entire world, whoever knows the story. I am not going to dig deep and bore you. These days, I am a bit inclined to bring in the epics as many writers, do look for inspiration from them and I am just trying to give them their due. Well, getting into the point, Geetha Govindam makers clearly never promoted it as a film with deep story and intense performances. It is a commercial romantic comedy that aimed at cashing the box office bucks by entertaining. Geetha Govindam Review.

It is a film that no one in the cast and crew, wanted you to take too seriously. They worked hard to make us believe that this is a story and to entertain us. That is all it is aimed at and that is what it ended up to be. I am not saying being commercial is good or bad. Many think commercial as a bad word or meant by people like me as bad but no, it isn’t. There are many commercial classics that have been highly popular over the years and we all love. Well, wanted to just clarify my opinion on that.

Now, in a movie like Geetha Govindam how much we are entertained takes the front seat and many mistakes go unnoticed. Any story, I mean ANY story can be brought to celluloid as a great one. No matter about whom you’re saying and what you’re saying but if you can convince the audience, then it is good and if you make them feel for the characters and enjoy the situations then it is great. Hence, even a love story of two about-to-die people, Geetanjali became a classic and a story about a couple who fall in love but the male character has to redeem himself, Cheliyaa became a flop. Both are made by the same person with similar passion. But the connectivity missed in the later while earlier still holds to be fresh.

So, all you need is good characters that people can connect to and there you have an interesting tale. But here Parasuram the director couldn’t transfer the ideas of Parasuram, the writer equally well on silver screen. Hence, what could have been a beautiful tale remains a well-made routine commercial film. When you have two clashing characters like Geetha and Govinda, you need the tension to build and at the same time, love to gradually clean up all the misunderstandings.

Rather the direction makes the writing look so blunt that we feel if there were no inspired performances from Vijay Devarakonda and Rashmika with their rollicking chemistry, the movie could have fallen flat. You don’t see the conflict becoming a routine for two or one turns out to be so over possessed by the other that in the time they have met, they feel like they should spend time together forever.

In a film like Mr. Pellam, even though the story is all about how male tries to dominate his wife, we don’t see him or her cruelly falling out of love or overtly turning hate into love. They just are two common people and they are a couple living in our neighborhood, that’s all. Similarly, even in Pelli Pusthakam, the couple have arguments, fights, and misunderstandings but love never happens in a second or it never shows up dramatically for us to say that this is a film and we can accept this. Well, some of you might be thinking about what can be a relationship between those two and this one.

All these films are commercial in their approach and comedy is their backbone with all characters appearing to be taken out from daily life. Parasuram as a writer chose characters that someone like Ramana garu etches and even tried to follow Radha Gopalam in establishing the character of the male lead. Don’t take this on the literal sense, the thinking is different, the presentation is different but at the base level, the ideas are to create a love story that we can see in everyday life with situations and characters that don’t necessarily have to be filmy while at the same time they are.

Geetha suddenly falls in love, Govindam suddenly feels that he cannot bare the torture for life. The person who is slow in understanding yet has a knack to grasp what and why others do certain things, his refusal seems to be internal that he gave up on the idea of being with Geetha than trying to understand her side words. Why does she hope he is happy with the proposal ? Why did she come all the way, in the night ? He doesn’t ponder on them while in earlier scenes he did show some maturity to understand why a girl behaved in a cheap, desperate way and in front of whom, he should scold her and save her respect.

There is such inconsistency, throughout the film, with random situations that are highly convenient falling in place for the story to move forward. A director who is very good, understands the intentions behind words and creates an atmosphere that setups the next scenes which don’t look to be out of place and let the characters have a balance. Here, we see all secondary characters acting as just fillers. All comedy scenes coming into fill the narration gaps and in place of gradual trust that Geetha should build on Govinda and conflict that she should face to accept him or not, to believe him or not are completely absent.

In the movie, Cinematography by Manikandan tries to lift the simple scenes and routine frames by adding to the overall feel and even the visuals aren’t just bluntly executed. There is a thought behind them but still, the director doesn’t come up with his touch or add anything more than what Cinematographer tried. Editor Marthand K. Venkatesh seems to be happy with what director has asked him to cut and the way, the team deems it fine. Rather than trying to see that the continuity errors are less or the lip sync matches the words exactly, he just goes on assembling a cut and that’s not expected from him.

While the movie is damn funny and looks bright, has good music, even has good characters that we can connect, it misses out on being even better and something that people would re-visit for situations, for the story, for characters. But it ends up as a film that people will laugh out and loud and forget the very next hour. Geetha and Govinda had a good writer to back them and good actors to perform but missed a good director to make them immortal. They just end up as good characters who could entertain in a certain film for a certain time. While I don’t complain about its commercial status or have any problem with it being received well, I do believe there is an opportunity missed there. What could have been a cohesive romantic comedy, ends up being a comedy that has some romance.