 "Adavallu Meeku Johaarlu movie review: Rashmika Mandanna trapped in a wafer-thin script, with even thinner conflict")
Language: Telugu You’d think a film with a title like Adavallu Meeku Johaarlu would in some form try to emulate Dasari Narayana Rao’s later films like Amma Raajinama where Feminism is anti-feminism and lifting one woman meant putting another down. That would be sluggish to watch, but thankfully this film doesn’t have such pretences. It is light on its feet and content, and as such, it is impressive that it manages to entertain as long as it does. Chiranjeevi (Sharwanad) is the only man in a family filled with many women, except for the fathers. So, he is pampered and over-loved. This over-love becomes a hindrance to marriage because no girl is good enough for him. He meets Aadhya (Rashmika Mandanna), who has her own set of parental issues and falls in love with her. The rest of the film is about what happens when you drag a wafer-thin script with a thinner conflict to fill up two odd hours.
Kishore Thirumala is one of those filmmakers who makes harmless films. They don’t make a lasting impression, but they don’t scar you for life either. I know it doesn’t sound like a compliment, but it is one.
It is easy to make a film consumed at face value alone. Even if the film is limited in many ways, he makes a mark. The dialogues, especially, are lovely. They are cinematic but not ill-placed. A sentence like, ‘Nachindhante baagundha antavente?’ (When he says he likes her, why are you asking if she is good-looking?) The film could’ve chosen to make a big deal out of a basic idea like looks-don’t-matter, but it doesn’t. Someone says it casually, and that only makes it more effective.
Things that could’ve been, and are, problems like the production that moves cities and states for a film set in, what I am assuming, Rajahmundry strangely help the film. Since we cannot root the film, in reality, we know that everything transpiring in front of us is make-believe. This limitation is why we aren’t frustrated by the lack of imagination. When Rashmika first shows her face from behind an umbrella, pleadingly looking at the pouring rain, we accept it because that is what heroines do in films. When all the ladies in the big, seemingly rich house sit together to make Aavakaaya, you snicker, but you understand. That is what joint families are all about: amma(s) and aavakaaya(s). But this zero-immersion technique also helps achieve intertextuality better. In a relatively profound moment, an enthused Chiru who wants to marry Aadhya asks her, ‘Mee annaya kanna oka bastha biyyam ekuva pandinchamantava?’ Aadhya looks confused, but the viewer isn’t. So, the joke lands effortlessly. Not just that, some slight subversions also make it hard to dismiss this film. The generic trope of ‘confusing the maid with the mother’ is subverted, not entirely better, but still. Even the stereotypical runaway bride plot is updated. It’s not the hero being the saviour that saves her relationship; it’s her being able to express her humanity that brings a change of heart. Similarly, the way the mother-daughter relationship is respected and constantly reinforced is lovely. Even if a handloom-saree wearing angry-feminist like Saritha (Jhansi) is written like a wrong person, Vakula (Kushboo) is given space to air her grievances. Then again, will she be okay sending her daughter off to a joint family filled with over-bearing mothers? I’m not sure, and neither is the film, that’s why it stops before it could answer any questions.
The film has all the limitations of a family drama ( dramedy?). It has a screenplay that is only slightly better/more extensive than one employed by a men’s deodorant ad on TV—self-awareness is the beginning of problem-solving, not the solution itself. The title song that comes after the interval block—the only good song in the film by an uninterested DSP—would’ve made better sense had it been placed at the film’s beginning. Otherwise, why is the 35-year-old man blaming the women in his family for his love failure? To make up for it, the film absorbs everything around. A poster on the road isn’t just a poster; it is there to be part of a joke, which brings me back to my point of zero immersion. Speaking of which, just because you have the budget for as many good character artists as you please doesn’t mean you can get them all. I will always take any film with Urvashi in it, but not when she is so woefully written. Expect for Kushboo’s measured performance, and Sharwanand’s ‘pure of heart, dumb of head’ antics, the actors fade into one another after a point. Adavallu Meeku Johaarlu is a prime example of a film trapped by its title. The messaging isn’t well thought out beyond the name. You can understand that the female presence is only limited to screen by how the film writes the woman who cannot have children. The film populates itself with women, so that it can blame everything on them. Only to end with calling them “enigmas.” A male character whose redeeming quality is that he understands women very well shouldn’t then go ahead and call them enigmas. Enigma is an excuse men use not to put in the time and effort to understand a fellow human being. That is terrible writing and generally awful. Rating: 2.5 (out of 5) stars Sankeertana Varma is an engineer who took a few years to realise that bringing two lovely things, movies and writing, together is as great as it sounds. Mainly writes about Telugu cinema.
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