A businessman is honoured with an honorary doctorate for his philanthropy but a rival is peeved because he's semi-literate. “You've bought Saraswathi with Lakshmi,” sneers the rival. Our hero feels humiliated. He gives the ownership papers of two factories he owns and says rival can keep them if he doesn't emerge educated. Hero gets admitted into the same college as his teenage son, as his junior. They live in a palatial house but strangely move into the hostel. Hero wins his uneasy classmates over, promptly falls in love with a lecturer and plays agony aunt to lovelorn students. Meanwhile, rival puts obstacles in his path. So does hero emerge triumphant in the end? Does he marry the lecturer and get back his property? I'm sure he does but I didn't wait to watch.
“Crazy Loka” lives up to its title. There's total chaos on-screen as the proceedings are directionless and puerile. The premise promises fun but what we get is barely amusing. The film is technically tacky be it the cinematography, sets or costumes. The less said about the music the better. I can understand the editor's inability to salvage the film. Ravichandran is aptly cast but can do little in an ill written role and pray, where did he find that weird wig? Harshika Poonacha is like a mime artiste who also speaks! The only redeeming thing in the film is Surya who plays the hero's son. He's good looking and is comfortable facing the camera. He could go places if he's signed by directors who can tell him what not to do. Kavitha Lankesh tries all the commercial tricks in the trade. She stuffs an obese Ravichandran into a leather jacket and pants and makes him ride a swanky bike to college, a la “Prema Loka”. There are a couple of clippings from his old films. It's become fashionable for Kannada directors to take a cinematic dig at colleagues. Avinash in the film is snoring during a screening of “Paramathma” and when woken by his mother (a miscast Bharathi) says the film is sheer torture. There's Ramya in a badly shot song sequence.
‘Prothsaha'(encouragement) is the most commonly used term along with ‘different' by Kannada film directors when promoting their films urging Kannadigas to support films made in their mother tongue. So there was Kavitha, on TV urging viewers to support her clean entertainer. I watched “Crazy Loka” on the fourth day of its release at a theatre in Majestic with around twenty people scattered around. The truth is Bangalore is the only city where a film will get the audience it deserves irrespective of the language. If “Vicky Donor” is still doing well at a few theatres it's because the film is a clean entertainer which could have easily been crude. No amount of publicity, positive or negative can save a bad film. There's a serious dearth of fresh, young talent who're passionate about the fascinating process called filmmaking.
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