Kotha Bangaru Lokam
Jeevi rating: 4/5

Punchline: a good filmGenre: Romance/Drama Type: Straight Banner: Sri Venkateswara Creations
Cast: Varun Sandesh, Sweta Basu Prasad, Prakash Raj, Jayasudha, Ahuti Prasad, Brahmanandam, Rao Ramesh
Music: Micky J Meyer Cinematography: Chota K Naidu Art: AS Prakash Choreography: Sobhi Paulraj, Pradeep Antony, Baba BhaskarLyrics: Sirivennela Seetarama Sastry, Anant Sriram, Srikanth AddalaFights: SayeedEditing: Marthand K. VenkateshStory - Screenplay - Dialogues - Producer: Srikanth Addala Producer: Dil Raju Release date: 9 October 2008

Review
Story Balu (Varun Sandesh) is son of lovable middleclass couple (Prakash Raj & Jayasudha). Swapna (Sweta Basu Prasad) is the daughter of a strict and rich father. Both of them study in a residential college located at a small town of Godavari district. Balu and Swapna fall in love. Swapna is withdrawn from the residential school because her father comes to know about her love. The rest of the story is all about how Balu and Swapna try to get back to each other.

Artists Performance
Main leads: Varun Sandesh shows improvement in this film compared to his debut in Happy Days. He suited the character of the film very well and he needs to work strongly on getting diction right. His boyish charm wins you over. Sweta Basu Prasad (award winning child actress from Iqbal film) is very good and she perfects her role with her childlike innocent look. However, there is a bit of inconsistency in the dubbing in the initial part of the film.
Other actors: Jayasudha and Prakash Raj play a perfect couple like they did in Bommarillu film. However, Jayasudha's role is more meaningful and vital in this film. Ahuti Prasad is good as the father of heroine. Rao Ramesh who impressed everybody in his radical portrayal in Gamyam did the key character of a lecturer in the film. He is very good though he appears to have gone little over board in the class room scenes. This film has lots of fresh faces as friends of hero and heroine. And all of them are natural and add some value to the film. Brahmanandam character offers variety.

Technical departments
Story - screenplay - direction: Story of the film is about parenting. This film has got an arresting narration and intelligent screenplay in the second half. The debutant director Srikanth Addala comes up with a script that offers lot of freshness. There are many scenes and situations in the film which would have gone the clichéd way, but the director makes sure that he avoids clichéd and melodramatic scenes. He could able to conceive the emotional scenes in the second half excellently. Dil Raju offers another gem of a director in the form of Srikanth Addala through Kotha Bangaram Lokam after giving us Sukumar (Arya) and Bhaskar (Bommarillu).
Cinematography: I stopped writing separate paragraphs for individual technical departments in my reviews long back. But I think Chota K Naidu's work in this film deserve a separate para. I see Tamil cinematographers ruling the Telugu film industry and wondered why Telugu cinematographers can't come up with such stuff. Today I felt really happy that Chota K Naidu gave a fitting reply to everybody that a Telugu cinematographer can come up with a fabulous stuff. The entire film is like picture postcard photography. You can take any frame in the film and send it as a postcard. The colors and lighting used for the film are highly pleasing to your eyes. The way he has shown the Godavari bridge is entirely different from what we have seen in the earlier films.

Other departments: Music of the film is exceptionally great. Mickey J Meyer repeats his magic after Happy Days with this film. The background music and re-recording of the film is equally good. Dialogues by the director Srikanth Addala are very good. Marthand K Venkatesh's editing is smooth. Artwork by Prakash is nice. The CG work by Pixelloid and the DI work also deserve a special mention. Producer Dil Raju made sure that he spends lot of money and quality time on this film. He continues his marathon of classic hits after Arya and Bommarillu with this film.

Analysis: First of the film is decent and the second half is excellent. Like Bommarillu, this film too deals with the problem of parents and kids. In that film, they tried to balance between parents and kids, this film takes some bias towards parents as the kids in this film are doing intermediate unlike the graduates in Bommarillu. If Happy Days makes you feel nostalgic about your engineering college days, KBL will make you feel nostalgic about your intermediate days in a residential college. This film sends good message out to the society. The only thing I did not like in the entire film is that the filmmaker has shown Ahuti Prasad (father of the girl) as a bakra. Coming to my rating statistics, my last 4 rated film was Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana (January 2005), my last 4.5 rated film was Bommarillu (August 2006) and my last 3.5 rated film was Happy Days (September 2007). Kotha Bangaru Lokam film deserves a rating of 4. Go, watch the film and pamper yourself..

CHINTAKAYALA RAVI MOVIE REVIEW

About Ratings
Editorial Suggestions
Can watch again - Yes
Good for kids - Yes
Good for dates - Yes
Wait to rent it - No
Editorial Review
Would you rather pretend to be someone else in order to please your mother, or would you rather be honest and respect your mother's right to know the truth? Is not deception more hurtful than bare-faced reality? It's hard not to get into that ideological debate when you watch a film that glorifies a liar.But save the ethical questions for some other time. Because Chintakayala Ravi has other problems in life.Chintakalaya Ravi (Venkatesh) works as a bartender in the USA, but everyone back home thinks he is a software engineer. His mother (Lakshmi) struts about wearing her son's profession like a badge of honour. Soon she even finds a nice girl, Lavanya (Mamata Mohandas), for him to get married to.Lavanya, thankfully being more intelligent than expected, wants to do a background check on him, through her friend Sunitha (Anushka) in the US. So as you can see, C Ravi has some tough times to handle. And quite a bit of falling in love to do. Will the reluctant cat be pulled out of the bag? How will Ravi find a way out? Why doesn't he tell the truth and get it over with?For the morally upright, the last question is not going to be answered in this film. Nevertheless, Chintakayala Ravi is a nice, believable, fun, romantic story revolving around some beautiful people. Our filmi foreign fixations are mostly limited to Swiss and Aussie locales for songs and dances, so it's refreshing to have films that also talk about lives out there in a realistic way.However, the romantic bits in Chintakayala Ravi, while breezy, are disappointingly brief. There could have been some more spark, some more shy glances, and some more 'moments'. Things take a U-turn too soon, it seems.Then, there are acts and acts blatantly borrowed from other movies (successfully adding to the Yash Raj feel), but hey, it's not polite to point when you've come to watch a Venkatesh-comedy. And anyway, 'inspirations' don't matter (who do you know whose work is not inspired, anyway?) when you are busy getting entertained and feeling good. Humour is everywhere in Chintakayala Ravi - and it's mostly clean. The bits of toilet humour are nothing to cringe majorly at.The film has been mostly shot abroad, whose Telugu community it is clearly aimed at. With half our brethren in America, and with the Snapfishes, Flickrs and Picassas of the world, foreign locales don't seem so foreign now, but they still are charming to watch in the movies. And they lend the film a Yash Raj look.The music is very typical Vishal-Shekhar fare (they've even brought in a few of their own tunes from Bollywood), and does not let you down at all. Bagunde Bagunde is one particularly amazing song, which you will keep humming long after the movie is over.Needless to say, the film's biggest asset is Venkatesh, and for the most part, it is he who provides the polish for this movie. Comedy comes naturally to him, as does romance. Both the heroines are good, and good-looking. Lakshmi stars in a major role, and does well.Chintakayala Ravi is a light-hearted flick with few alternatives. Do take your family along.