Inttelligent movie review: Sai Dharam Tej's film showcases an outdated format, stale humour

When a film is titled Inttelligent with an extra ‘t’, instead of the regular and proper spelling of intelligent, you’d think that there’s something in the film. It’s quite natural for people to assume that there might really be something intelligent, or even beyond the understanding of the average moviegoer, because the makers have coined a new word altogether. But who are they kidding? This film is not coming from the house of an indie director who’s trying to expand the scope of Telugu cinema in terms of art. The director, VV Vinayak, is known for making masala action films with a tinge of comedy. So there’s absolutely no explanation other than nameology (numerology’s fashionable sibling) for this fad. [caption id=“attachment_4343991” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Youtube still from Inttelligent,[/caption] A movie that bows down to superstitious beliefs is a movie that doesn’t believe in its own strengths. The makers have not just proven this by naming their film with a faulty-lettered-word; their output is a living proof of their ludicrousness. Had Vinayak asked his story writer, Shiva Akula, some pressing questions like “What’s the purpose of making this film?” at the scripting stage, Inttelligent wouldn’t have been made and the audiences’ important hours spent in the theater could have been saved. Akula’s story of a sincere man rising against the tyranny of evil men would have, perhaps, looked good on paper. I take that back. It would have still tasted like unsalted meat considering its outdated format. What a downhill run this has been for Sai Dharam Tej after Subramanyam For Sale and Supreme. Have the movies been failing him, or has he consistently been choosing trashy films? It’s a mix of both, I guess. Sai Dharam Tej plays a character of the same name in Inttelligent, who’s loyal to his employer (Nassar). Please underline the word ’loyalty’ here, for that is what this whole movie is about. In fact, his previous release, Jawaan in which he played a savior, also relied on a similar sentiment. There, the loyalty was directed towards the nation. Tej was ready to go to any lengths to protect his nation from the hands of money-hungry terrorists. The actor’s doing all these things again, however the flavour is more local. The big talks about pride and being an Indian (in Jawaan) are replaced with goodness and giving back to the society (in Inttelligent). [caption id=“attachment_4343995” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Youtube still from Inttelligent.[/caption] Inttelligent is a starry affair with top comedians (Prudhvi Raj, Thagubothu Ramesh, Vidyullekha Raman, Jaya Prakash Reddy, Sapthagiri, Posani Krishna Murali, Rahul Ramakrishna, and Brahmanandam) and villains (Vineet Kumar, Dev Gill, and Rahul Dev) appearing during different points of the run time. However, none of their characters are interesting enough to glue us to our seats. They offer nothing for us to take home. The only character that I was rooting for was a thug who got killed midway. His introduction scene – where he buys two cigarettes from a teashop and informs the seller that he’ll pay him the next day as he forgot to carry his wallet since he was busy planning the murder of a government official – didn’t seem like it was a part of this film. That particular scene had a great amount of flair and color. Had Vinayak’s screenplay applied the same formula of diligence throughout the film, maybe Inttelligent would have been a bit more intelligent in its usage of fresh humor. I wonder what makes leading actresses pick movies like Inttelligent in the first place. Lavanya Tripathi, who has steadily been climbing one ladder after another in Telugu cinema, literally appears in a few songs and scenes. Get this: Tripathi isn’t seen on screen for about fifteen minutes straight. The limelight is entirely being hogged by the hero as he’s fighting the goons and throwing punch dialogues that don’t make any sense when suddenly, he receives a message that says “I love you” and bam — there’s a song. Every time the lead pair makes eye contact, a song in a foreign location pops up. Are we watching a feature film, or an advertisement commercial for the tourism department? When VV Vinayak takes his audience for a long and bumpy ride, the result is a somber-looking room of audience members; not faces filled with glee.