Aadikeshava

violence, adoption

• Title: Aadikeshava
• Cast: Vaishnav Tej, Joju George, Suman, Sreeleela….
• Director: Srikanth N Reddy
• Music Director: G V Prakash Kumar

Balu (Vaishnav Tej) lands a job at Chitra’s (Sreeleela) company and soon after finds out truths about his life that take him on an unexpected journey.

The plot seems to be more in line with the movies that came out in the 2000s with the protagonist being connected to a family and entering their world to solve their problems. This unfortunately is the biggest drawback of the plot, making it predictable.

• Direction: Without much left to suspense, the story moved at an even pace from beginning to end. While there wasn’t any feeling of the story lagging, there wasn’t much excitement either.
• Acting: Almost all of the actors fulfilled their job, it felt like there was depth missing in the movie with most scenes being overshadowed by becoming subplots that serve to make the protagonist shine. The peak performance of this film is given by Sudarshan Reddy with his timing and comedic relief. Vaishnav Tej’s performance was disappointing with this being a template character. His attempt at imitating Allu Arjun’s and Chiranjeevi’s body language and demeanor is sad. Sreeleela’s acting is difficult to discern from the terrible writing.
• Editing: The transition from scene to scene gets pretty choppy at times, especially with the huge difference in volume between scenes.
• Music: The music served its job. The background score in the second half during the Ganga’s subplot is notable.
• Dialogues: The bland characters had bland dialogue.

• This whole movie was overproduced. The locations for the songs are unnecessary. Balu’s house, clothing, and possessions don’t look like he lives the middle-class life. They might have been trying to cover the outdated storyline but it didn’t work.
• Looks like using dialogues that make you look like you’re a feminist is all the rage now. It’s frustrating to watch all these plotlines of him speaking in support of women while also being complicit in their erasure
  • When he enters Vajra’s house (even though no one asks him to) and covers for Vajra’s father – he does not know if he is a good man/father, he does not know the history between the father and the daughter, he deceives her into thinking he cared about her birthday which seemed important to her – he is portrayed as an amazing person
  • When Sreeleela speaks about child labor and abuse in her company (which she doesn’t know about???), they undermine what she is saying with the background score
  • Rudhra seems very proud to be the one announcing Vajra standing in the upcoming election but is nowhere to be found when she is campaigning even though it is an obvious security risk
  • Vajra, who is the actual person standing against Chenga Reddy in the election, has little to no dialogue when she is announced or in her other scenes
  • He speaks of the feeling of a mother’s lap while sitting on the bench – as if his relationship with the mother that brought him up didn’t give him that

Maybe? If you are a fan of Sudarshan Reddy, you can see what good comedic timing can look like. But his scenes are far and rare.

Otherwise, no.

• Sada’s rare appearance while appreciated, is also disappointing as she is given no scope. As is the case with most of the women in the story.
• Outdated. So outdated.
• ‘Leelammo’ song was overstimulating
• Maha Kaleshwar Reddy’s character is so inconsistent with his portrayal
  • He seemingly doesn’t do much to combat the ongoing child abuse
  • We come to know that adults don’t work in his town and only kids do – didn’t he mention to Balu that he creates jobs but Chenga Reddy gets in his way? Who was he creating jobs for?
  • From what we hear, he could be an absent father
  • Isn’t it naïve to think that marrying Chenga Reddy to his brother’s daughter would not result in some form of abuse, knowing his character?
• What is Balu’s job title? Driver? Assistant? Salesperson??
• What is with the blurring of everyone’s shoes in the temple fight? Was it an oversight during the shoot that was “corrected” or a response to feedback? Either way, it was pretty distracting

Movie Rating: 5/10

Maguva Impact Scale: -1