Julayi movie review

There are directors who know the mass pulse and can set the cash registers ringing. There are directors who can make the best of wooden faces act. There are directors who feel that it’s their job to make movies and make it the way they like it, regardless of the mass sensibilities. There are directors who mould their working style to the strengths of the actor, thereby bringing the latent talents to the fore. Trivikram Srinivas belongs to the last class of the directors

Allu Arjun, for most of us, is known as an actor whose strength doesn’t lie in reciting pages of dialogues. It still isn’t. Trivikram comes into the picture here, as he doesn’t expose this particular weakness by giving him short dialogues and crispy one’s at that.

Trivikram’s movies have all got similar ingredients- dialogues, romantic track of the hero with a weak female protagonist and a patriarchal character. From Jalsa on, he has had one more thing added to the list- comical performances by the protagonists. All these factors never give way to attrition for us as Trivikram has made it a habit to intersperse all these with beautiful dialogues. A pointer to the above mentioned is Brahmanandam’s role in the movie. Though short in screen time, he has two scenes that he can easily add to the archives of his best scenes- one where he talks about the writer’s block and the other being his scene with Hema and Dharmavarapu Subramanyam.

From Khaleja on, his movies have entirely depended on the protagonist. This movie too, is driven by Allu Arjun’s character. Sonu Sood excels as the intense antagonist, only for his part’s characterisation to go up in the climax. Illeana has nothing to do in the film, apart from appearing a few songs.

The director sets up the movie very early in the first half. It is a clash between the protagonist and the antagonist. Trivikram had revealed in an interview that he is a book-worm. A case for psychology analysis can be done for a few scenes in the movie. Watch out for those scenes where the thought process of both the actors proceeds along the same line. This is repeated by Tanikella Bharani towards the end of the movie when he admonishes his son. He reiterates that there is nothing different between his son and the villain. Just that the villain thinks in crores and his son thinks in lakhs.

Dialogues, as usual, are the backbone of this film too. There are a lot of dialogues that stand out, but the best of them are:

Allu Arjun: Mana desam lo logic kante magic paine nammakkam ekkuvva… andukke scientist la kante mana desam lo babalu famous ayyipoyyaru

Dharmavarapu: Veediki nenu koduku la vunna … veedu pelli koduku enti

Allu Arjun has performed well in a role that requires him to be comical, confident, violent and romantic. His dances still remain his best USP. Comparisons with Mahesh Babu, from Khaleja, are bound to arise but he has done well keeping his limitations in mind. His chemistry with Rajendra Prasad is much better than that with Illeana. His imitation of few actors in couple of songs is hilarious

Illeana has nothing to do in a role that asks her to appear sparingly. Accordingly, she doesn’t look at her best in the movie. Her poorly sketched character is perhaps the biggest flaw of the movie. One or two more movies of the same, and she can kiss her fading career in the Telugu film industry a good bye

Sonu Sood has the second best role of the movie. He excels in the role till it is botched up in the climax. He has to take care of not being repetitive in the antagonist roles.

Rajendra Prasad has a good role and does good justice to it. Kota Srinivas Rao, Rao Ramesh, Tanikella Bharani are, as usual, excellent in the roles given to them

There is one flaw that still seems to haunt Trivikram- ending his films. He has a similar problem with this movie too. If not for that, there is nothing much to complain about the movie