Oct 05, 2006 04:43 PM
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A R Murugadoss of Ghajini fame teams up with Anjana Productions, the home banner of Megastar Chiranjeevi, in Stalin - The Man for the Society. The prerelease craze for this movie had been phenomenal with advance booking for the first week closing a full three days before the movie actually hit the marquee.
So when I walked into the theatre on September 20th, I knew I was one of the lucky few who could see this movie on the very first day of its release. The expectations on this movie were soaring high in spite of the not-so-great soundtrack of the movie.
Stalin on the whole fails to live up to these expectations.
The movie does not have a good script and wanders here and there without any clue or sense of direction most of the time. There are at least two disjointed stories running in parallel - one, of the hero's crusade against an evil politician and the other of an Indianized "Pay it Forward". The problem with the script is that it fails to convincingly tie these two stories together. The fallout of this problem is that neither thread manages to strike any chord with the viewer. Though the "Pay It Forward" concept is a noble one, the way it is told takes the sheen off the concept.
There are many illogical sequences in the movie. Obviously all these moments are in the movie just to give it a mass flavor. The movie is a victim of over commercialization.
The production values are also not up to the mark. Color grading is not uniform. CG shots are blurred and editing by Filmfare award winner Antony is disappointing. One gets a feeling that the makers depended only on the charisma of Megastar Chiranjeevi - his ability to draw crowds to the theatres - and overlooked important technical aspects of film making.
Coming to the songs, none of the songs make any lasting impression though Chiranjeevi excelled in his dances. The romantic angle with a 19 year old heroine did not jell well with the central theme (rather themes) of the movie.
Chiranjeevi, as usual, is the only reason to sit through the three hours of Stalin. His comic timing is top notch. The ferocious intensity of his eyes while dealing with the villains tells us why he is still the Megastar of Telugu movie industry. It is sad that he is not getting good scripts. Instead of good scripts that augment his talents, he is getting tacky scripts that need his image to sail through.
On the whole, Stalin disappoints.
