Ramani Kalyanam Movie Review

Tollywood is undergoing a dry spell. With Peddi coming up and IPL keeping audiences away from theaters, notable films are holding their releases until June. So, several small films are making their way to theaters in this gap. Ramani Kalyanam is one such small film released in theaters this Friday.

What is the movie about?

Sanjana (Deepshikha Chandran) loses her eyesight and entire family in her childhood when they get into a car accident. Once grown up, she does not lose hope and raise four orphans as her own kids. She works as a Singer in a Pub and as a Jockey in a Radio Station for a living. She meets Raj (Surya Vashissta) in the Pub who has his body partially paralyzed in an accident. Raj was a cricketer, and the accident happens on the day he gets selected to the national team. While Sanjana lives her life confidently, Raj lives in the trauma of his past. Both of them fall in love but something dramatic happens in their lives. Rest of the story is all about it.

Performances:

Surya Vashissta looks handsome but confining him to a wheelchair and in trauma largely restricted his Performance ability. Deepshikha Chandran has good looks and largely performed well. But she faltered when it comes to emotional sequences. The idea of a confident blind woman also brought a certain degree of awkwardness in her performance. There should be a certain degree of vulnerability in a blind woman but that is missing in that character. Srinivas Reddy got a prominent role after a long time but there is not adequate meat in his character either. Anchor Shyamala is seen on the big screen after ages, and this role has decent screen space. But performance-wise, she barely registers. Chaitu Jonnalagadda appears in a little sequence as a doctor and he is okay.

Technicalities:

Technically, the movie punches above its weight. The visuals are good and some of the locations appear costly. Music by Sooraj S Kurup is pleasant in places and a couple of songs are good to hear in the proceedings. Vijay Adireddy writes and directs Ramani Kalyanam. Right from the title to the writing, there appears to be an attempt to make everything poetic, but it lacks the weight to push the film across the finish line. Court director Ram Jagadeesh provided the screenplay and dialogues for the film but he barely makes an impact. Some dialogues come across as too dramatic rather than poetic. The Production Values are good for a film of this scale.

Positives:

1.⁠ ⁠Decent Music
2.⁠ ⁠Pleasant Visuals⁠

Negatives:

1.⁠ ⁠Excessive Melodrama
2.⁠ ⁠Not So Effective Twists
3.⁠ ⁠Sluggish Pace

Analysis:

Ramani Kalyanam, the title itself has a poetic touch. Ramani means a beautiful woman in Telugu and the film is about a woman’s marriage and hence, it is titled ‘Ramani Kalyanam’. That itself indicates the director intends to give a poetic treatment to the story. The idea of two physically impaired hero and heroine coming together in a love story is indeed a very exciting idea. The director and his team, did well in coming up with the idea, setting up the idea with good music, eye catchy visuals and good casting. There’s nothing to complain about the setup and casting of the film.

However, the drama, the pain, and the emotions, the stories of similar kind often step into the zone of melodrama. Films like Geethanjali made on a similar premise worked but those are instances where everything came together and succeeded. It is very difficult to sell such stories to audiences in theaters these days as family audiences are not coming to theaters, and the majority of footfalls these days are impatient youngsters. Director Vijay Adireddy became the producer for the film as it is difficult to convince someone to produce such a story. The Good part of Ramani Kalyanam is that the casting is good and known faces. When coupled with good production values, the film appears grand and does not give that small-film feeling.

But then, Vijay Adireddy let himself down with the writing. When there is pain, drama, and emotion with two physically impaired lead actors, it is important to make sure that the drama does not land in the melodrama zone. That is exactly what happened with Ramani Kalyanam. The depressed hero and the confident heroines drive the majority of proceedings in the first half but there is a sense of artificiality written all over. The convenient approach which the writer took made even the twist at the pre-interval, very predictable. From the pre-interval to the climax, everything we see on screen lacks freshness and authenticity.

The very basic requirement for a premises like, Ramani Kalyanam, is to make the audience empathise with the characters. Films like these works only when the audience feels the pain and suffering of the characters. It gets very difficult to sit through these films when the writer and director fail to make the audience empathise with the characters and it is exactly what happened with Ramani Kalyanam.

As the second half progresses, the audience will only distance themselves from the characters and the story because of the familiar and not-so-engaging treatment. The screenplay and dialogues writer, Ram Jagadeesh, Court fame, could have been much better to make the proceedings better. Overall, while the attempt is certainly appreciable, the way the film was written and executed, worked against it. We can see the passion of the makers to make a film, but passion alone is not enough to make the audience sit through for 126 minutes in theatre..

Bottomline: Poetic But Routine

Rating: 2/5