Review: Pilla Zamindar - Old wine in new bottle
Hyderabad: There is a rich zamindar. He has a spoilt brat for a grandson, played by Nani. You get the drift behind the title, Pilla Zamindar, which translates literally into kid zamindar. So the old man passes away leaving behind an inheritance worth five thousand crore rupees to his grandson.
But the inheritance comes with some riders attached. The grandson has to first prove himself a worthy successor and how he goes from spoilt to worthy of the title is the premise of the film.
The first half is easily the better part of the film, aka the comic part. It has good jokes and moves on breezily establishing characters. Nani plays the enfant terrible with Praveen Jayaramaraju, who rubs everybody the wrong way.
According to the will left behind by his late grandfather, Nani has to complete his graduation from a government college in a small village. He also has to get elected as a student leader in order to win his claim to the property.
How he copes with living life without all the luxuries makes for some amusing viewing. Then there is Sindhu (Haripriya), his love interest. Rao Ramesh plays a strict principal, MS Narayana plays an eccentric Telugu teacher and then there are his group of friends.
The comedy is typically dialogue-driven and slap-stick in nature. The director manages to evoke quite a few chuckles nevertheless. The second half, though, takes a melodramatic turn. The gags make way for some heady scenes of righteous transformation.
There are a few heart-tugging situations thrown in, but it gets a little too melodramatic and the entertainment quotient goes for a toss. Clocking well over two-and-a-half hours, the length of the film could be an issue.
The background score is inconsistent and fluctuates from good to mediocre. The screenplay is innovative, but only in the first half. The music is passable except for a couple of numbers. The dialogues are funny, albeit in parts ' some lines come off while others just fall flat.
Guess the filmmaker managed to fit in a little bit of everything in the film. There is also a message tucked in about the importance of being and doing good. So it's one of those films that stays true to the formula, but leaves you feeling there's something amiss.
News Posted: 15 October, 2011
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