So many things about the Teaser for SlumDog - 33 Temple Road are annoying, but there is one particular element that towers above the rest. Tabu plays a swaggy (lol) inspector whose character is fashioned after Ramya Krishnan's loud cop character from Romantic, a mega dud Puri Jagannadh proudly wrote. In that film, Ramya Krishnan started out issuing a stern warning to all the baddies in Goa, only to develop a soft corner for the male lead, a quintessential Puri-styled rogue. One hopes Tabu's character arc doesn't follow a similar path in SlumDog. Ideally, she shouldn't be related to Vijay Sethupathi as a sister from either the same mother or a different mother. With Tollywood, though, you should have no optimism.
Duniya Vijay Kumar must be playing a negative role, and if he is a villain, his only job will be to provoke/poke the hero. Antagonists are of course against the hero across the solar system, but in Puri's insufferable action entertainers, they sometimes make it a point to deploy eccentric henchmen to enrage the hero 24/7.
Zarina Wahab seems to be a vulnerable crybaby yet again after The Raja Saab. Samyuktha Menon must be doing Janhvi Kapoor things here (all the fans of Janhvi must start praying that her scenes won't be trimmed, because why should only the Peddi cutie get all the backlash?).
It's crazy that Puri managed to inspire so much hopelessness with just a 75-second video.
The film is jointly produced by Puri Jagannadh, Charmme Kaur, and JB Narayan Rao Kondrolla. Harshavardhan Rameshwar is the music director. Sam K Naidu is the cinematographer. Its release date is yet to be made official.
