It is obvious that after 1 Nenokkadine , director Sukumar got a good boost to follow his heart and make another smart film for the class audiences.
It is not fair to segregate a film, but in this case, it surely is easy to make a common man say the film is anything but entertaining.
The lead character Abhi (NTR) has been designed to show zilch emotions as he goes about executing the daunting task of turning his father’s enemy into a pauper. The film opens in London and the second half is set in Spain.
Ramachandra Prasad (Rajendra Prasad) is the richest Indian entrepreneur in London and loses all his wealth to Krishnamurthy (Jagapati Babu). He gives his three sons a modest yet decent life. They are happy and settled, but the man himself is seething with revenge.
The youngest son Abhi takes it upon himself to settle scores with Krishnamurthy and to give his dad a peaceful send off; since his father is suffering from pancreatic cancer and has just 30 days to live.
If this revenge story is told in a normal screenplay, then it doesn’t need a Sukumar to direct it. Here, he brings in a lot of IQ dialogues and episodes to establish the warring characters in the story and to also show how he falls in love and conveys it. It takes just a few minutes into the film to understand that the director is hell bent on displaying his intelligence rather than entertaining the audience...to make it simple, he was teaching math, physics, psychology and the result - absolutely no chemistry between the characters.
It is nice to see a woman falling in love with the IQ levels of a man, but taking hair samples to a clinic to check her oestrogen levels is far-fetched. Rakul plays Divyanka, daughter of Krishnamurthy. She does a fairly good job but her Telugu is a farce. The entire story is in tandem with the title, Abhi selects his team to accomplish his task and they all fulfil the criterion of having unconditional love for their fathers. That is fine, but at some point, Sukumar shows his bankruptcy of ideas.
He names Abhi’s company as KMC meaning “Krishnamurthy Ni Munche Company” (Company established to drown him).
NTR’s look has no connection with the story, you grapple with his disoriented styling even as you take time to register the Butterfly Effect, the string theory etc. When one is making a film with a star and for a huge mass, introducing complex theories to narrate an emotion may backfire.
It is a toned NTR completely, and it is gratifying to see him in a different role and scream only in one short scene, i,e., towards the end in the hospital.
The last scene is supposed to carry a heavy emotion, but ends up being hilarious. We have Abhi clapping and thumping his own chest and screaming “ Nanna Le Nanna Le ” (Dad wake up) as he lies on the hospital bed; he could have perhaps been successful in reviving his father if he thumped him and not himself.
Technically, NPT impresses. But you see more of Sukumar’s philosophy overshadowing the lead and ensemble characters.
– Y. Sunita Chowdhary
Nannaku Prematho
Cast: NTR, Rakul Preet
Direction: Sukumar
Music: Devi Sri Prasad
Genre: Revenge thriller
Plot: A son has exactly 30 days to fulfil his dad’s last wish
Bottomline: Director should have gifted a razor sharp script, not razors to his characters
