Ghani: Spineless Mocktail of Cocktails

Ghani Review

Star Cast: Varun Tej, Saiee Manjrekar, Jagapathi Babu, Upendra, Suniel Shetty, Naresh, Naveen Chandra & Tanikella Bharani
Cinematography by George C Williams
Edited by Marthand K Venkatesh
Music Composed by S Thaman 

 Prelude:

For a long time, I wrestled with the idea of reviewing films that I thought deserved the effort. Even though I enjoy watching films, reviewing takes time and energy. Thought of doing it only for those that inspired me to go for the hoops. Well, with this film decided to try to give short take reviews as well for a few films that don’t deserve any effort as the makers seem to have put the least possible effort.

The Short Take:

Varun Tej made Tholiprema which is not at all related to his uncle Pawan Kalyan‘s classic of the same name. But now, he made Ghani, which is completely derived from Thammudu and that is the major problem for this one. It tries too hard to emulate the similar emotion that worked brilliantly in the movie, without understanding the core. When you decide to start a bike without an engine then you will either be termed a genius or a fool, based on your success. The same applies to Ghani.

Why do I say that? – A character arc depends on the journey it goes through. In Thammudu, Balu starts out as a young boy without any proper goal in life, and by the end of the film, he achieves what his brother set out to and failed due to external forces. Here, Ghani hates his father and after knowing the truth, ends up fulfilling the man’s noble dream. There is similarity and scope for the character’s journey. A young boy who is forced to hate his father starts to respect him by the end of the film. But this journey seems boring because Balu has connectivity. He is likable and designed like a boy next door. Ghani is alienated from every possible emotional connection that helps us to connect with him and understand his pain. Their father, elder brother, and one side lover of Balu give us enough meat to root for him in the hope that he succeeds for them. Here, Ghani’s success feels like a forced samosa shoved into our throat when we least wanted to eat it. Sultan and Chak De India give proper character arc to their leads for us to connect with. Ghani gets a bad romantic track, poorly written cliched emotional scenes, and badly executed fights to top them all. Amma Nanna Tamil Ammayi could work brilliantly at the same time Johnny failed. The difference is connectivity with the main lead.

Without any proper character graph or clarity on how to grip us with emotions and narrate a proper tale, Kiran depends on a deafening soundtrack composed by Thaman. After huge successful OSTs, this is like the law of averages catching up with him. The sound engineer should visit an ENT specialist for sure. Definitely, he made me think about going for a check-up with loud mixing.

In short, like every other filmmaker, this senior-most co-director who became a director decided to take “inspirations” from all the classics and even take similar scenes to make his film. This is not a bad practice when you have an idea to tell and need some sort of skeleton to follow. When the idea itself is borrowed and you borrow scenes too, this makes no sense. On the whole, Ghani is like playing hide and seek in the ground with floodlights which has no places to hide.

Ghani Review