'Geethanjali Malli Vachindi' is presented by Kona Venkat and produced by MVV Cinema and Kona Film Corporation. Starring Anjali and others, the film hit the screens today. In this section, we are going to review the latest box-office release.
Plot:
A ventriloquist (Ali) chances upon a possessed doll. During a performance in Ooty, the doll reveals its true colours. It has been possessed by the ghost of a dead woman who wants to save her sister from imminent danger. In Ooty's Sangeet Mahal, Anjali & Co. are there to shoot for a horror-comedy film. A family of three have been living there as enraged spirits. Before the completion of the shoot, the ghostly family wants to bay for the blood of the film unit.
Performances:
This one is Anjali's 50th film and she surely didn't deserve to be treated this badly by her landmark film. Her performance and characterization are superficial. The saving grace in this otherwise mediocre horror-comedy are Satya and Sunil. They are downright hilarious with their ridiculous traits.
Srinivas Reddy, Satyam Rajesh, Shakalaka Shankar, Ravi Shankar, Siri Hanumanth, Srikanth Iyengar, Goparaju Ramana, Mukku Avinash and others are seen in different roles.
Technical aspects:
Pravin Lakkaraju's background score is ordinary. Sujatha Siddhartha's cinematography and Narni Srinivas' art direction don't work in tandem. The good news is that the script and the genre don't excessively depend on special effects. The idiosyncratic situations compensate for the absence of production values.
Post-Mortem:
Kona Venkat's story and screenplay (in association with Bhanu Bhogavarapu) are uneven. Director Shiva Turlapati doesn't ensure that the haphazard portions are evened out. The horror-comedy genre has been overused since the days of 'Prema Katha Chitram'. The makers of 'Om Bheem Bush' recently shied away from describing their movie as a horror-comedy precisely because they didn't want the audience to be disappointed with the genre overdose.
In contrast, the trailer for 'Geethanjali Malli Vachindi' went all out. Its many comedians and many ghosts came together to set the audience's expectations right. Whatever box-office traction this film might receive will be because of its status of being a sequel.
In a strict sense of the term, the film could have a standalone one and it would have made little difference. The first part, titled 'Geethanjali', could have been narrated in a 10-minute flashback and be done with it. As it is, the sequel is least interested in staging its one well-thought-out flashback. The backstory involving Shastri and his family is hurried through. The emotional beats haven't been established at all.
The horror movie cliches are all over the place. A caretaker, who is otherwise a comedian, looks eerie in the haunted mansion. The sounds of anklets and the dusty ambience are meh. The womanizers behave like creeps from old movies. When it is not cheap, the comedy is problematic. The surname Munda has been cheapened for cheap laughs.
Despite loads of evidence to the contrary, characters keep silencing others for saying that there are ghosts in the mansion. For reasons best known to them, the characters have story sittings in the haunted mansion. Some jokes write themselves and the story of this film is one such.
A character in the film says that the audience these days want to be excited by the concept, the story of the film be damned. Writer Kona Venkat seems to believe in this supposed mantra. His 'Waltair Veerayya' became a blockbuster because of the concept of blending the stardom of Chiranjeevi with the metaness brought in by Ravi Teja. Otherwise, it was an outdated story.
Closing Remarks:
This is a disappointing horror-comedy with a few funny episodes.
