Review: Sukumarudu aka Greekuveerudu

Why a film for two hours and forty minutes with a team full of half and even less actors? Time enough to view a Ray and a Hitchcock film. The film is laborious and constantly aimed at your sensitivity.

Characters are as realistic as cardboard cut-outs and loud to a fault. The script meanders through the formulistic milestones of family gatherings, villains from opposite camps lampooned as idiotic and violent, boy woos girl, fights, dances, interruptive songs and comic interludes.

The most blundering feature of the film is to believe that a script of such proportion can be handled by an upcoming actor like Aadi who plays the central character. This is ideally a script for the likes of Ravi Teja who could serve you dollops of the irreverence with a sweep that is his signature.

Not Aadi. He is inadequate. Adding to this, is a weird editing (Praveen Pudi) who simply puts together all the scenes shot and places them chronologically aided and abetted by his understanding of the tale. Director G Ashok decides to pick pieces from the hackneyed tales of revenge and melodrama of large families to build around a single character ' the hero.

It is the story of a highly self-centred Sukumar (Aadi) who frowns at all who do not contribute to his 'here and now' priorities. He is rude to his staff who are gathered to celebrate his global success and uses wafer transparent methods as great business acumen. He is rude to his dad too. When he fails to raise funds to start off on his own, he schemes to visit his maternal grandma Vandanamma (Sarada) and rob her of all her property.

He feigns affection for one and all in the huge mansion which includes uncles, aunts and similar hangers on. The team includes the likes of MS Narayana, Rao Ramesh and Srinivas Avasarala. Also in the village is Pidugu Raju (Raghu Babu) who is sitting on part of the lands that belong to the grandparents Vandanamma and her late husband (Krishna in a cameo).

There is Jayaprakash Reddy and his family of imbeciles who seem to have the records of the family and then the villain Tanikella Bharani. Many years ago Vandanamma's daughter eloped with her lover abroad and thus the family disconnect and though the family is willing to accept the couple at the instance of the local villain, it is perceived as a crime.

The love angle has local lass Sankari (Nisha Agarwal), daughter of Chandramohan, who has a huge family that can be canned only on the big screen. Also in walks the hero's cousin Devaki (Bhavna Ruparel). How he avenges the wrong and establishes a model village and how he himself has a change of heart is the long long story.

While the veterans do their job with ease the lead pair leaves too much to be desired. We are transported to this village in which no one is normal and there is not even a lucid interval expect the real interval. Aadi dances as elegantly as a puppet at an amateur's puppet show. After trying to hone the guys acting skills, he calls in the stunt man in desperation who aided by graphics, manages to place the hero in the central position.

The female lead does not even add the required or expected glamour quotient to the tale. Sarada as the central character brings credibility and class to her role. The wardrobe of the veteran actress is a high point in the film as is the final moment given to MS Narayana. Avoid the movie unless you are an indulgent Aadi fan.