Lovely borrows a premise that's as old as the hills and tries to infuse new life into it. From Father of the Bride to the recent Aakasamantha, we've seen enough number of movies exploring the father-daughter relationship — a possessive father going all out to ‘protect' his daughter from the influence of a young man and in the process making a laughing stock of himself.
Director B. Jaya chooses Rajendra Prasad (as businessman Mangalampalli Maharathi, the role is a cakewalk for him) to play the father. As a doting dad, his life revolves around his daughter Lavanya aka Lovely (newcomer Shanvi). He firmly believes his daughter will do nothing to upset him. No prizes for guessing that this is not to be.
Lovely and Aakash (Aadi) meet under strange circumstances, both stepping in place of their respective friends (Venella Kishore and Chinmayi) who've met on Facebook. Oh wait, does it remind you of Mujhse Dosti Karoge? The way this episode is handled, MDK looks like a masterpiece! The cat is out of the bag in no time and Lovely and Aakash fall in love. But he has to convince the father to win over the girl. By the time he does that, we lose interest.
In his second film, Aadi showcases his dancing skills, does gravity-defying stunts and plays the urban cool dude. As an actor, he shows earnestness but has a long way to go. The less said about Shanvi the better. Satya Krishna, as Aadi's bhabhi, gets some of the best lines in the film and we wish her role was better etched out. She runs the risk of being typecast in firebrand kind of roles though.
Lovely has its moments of fun, mainly because of the witty dialogues throughout the film. B. Jaya needs to be applauded for avoiding cuss words and dialogues steeped in sexual innuendo in the name of comedy. But the lack of a coherent narrative, amateurish handling of key scenes, yawn-inducing songs (Anup Rubens without his Ishq magic) and stunts in the second half don't help the film.
For song sequences, the lead pair takes off to foreign locales. If some of that time, money and effort had gone into the script, the film would have been enjoyable.
Lovely
Cast : Rajendra Prasad, Aadi, Shanvi and others.
Direction : B. Jaya
Plot : Boy meets girl, has to impress her father who has other plans.
Bottomline : We've seen better films on father-daughter relationship.
