Sankarabharanam - Movie Review

What's it about?

A rich businessman in USA (Suman) gets cheated by his business partners. When he has lost all options to clear the debt of two million dollars, he tries to commit suicide but his wife and son rescue him in the nick of time. His wife tells his son Gautham (Nikhil) that she has an ancestral property in Bihar that is worth many crores, which is lying vacant for years. So Gautham lands in Bihar to sell off the property Sankarabharanam but finds that the palace is not vacant but has his relatives as habitants. Gautham's mission now is to make his relatives leave the palace and sell it off to a prospect buyer in two weeks. Here he meets his maradalu Happy (Nanditha) and a friend (Sapathagiri). In the village everyone thinks he is a billionaire and the kidnap gangs in the village kidnap expecting big ransom. A gang kidnaps him and finds that he is actually broke. Then the story takes many turns.

Analysis:

A remake of Subhash Kapoor's Phas Gaye Re Obama (2010), Kona Venkat presented Sankarabharanam is a comedy set against the backdrop of kidnap gangs in Bhiar. Unlike the original movie, this one doesn't focus alone kidnap business but also gives importance to the family drama between Nikhil's character and Happy's family member. First half of the movie is completely different from the original.

While the original movie focussed on a guy who faced huge losses due to recession in the USA and his troubles finding a buyer for his ancestral palace, in this remake the movie dwells on family sentiment losing focus on the basic story in the very first place.

After putting the viewer in doze off mode in the first half, the movie comes into the groove in second half post interval. The entire portion from there is hilarious as Prudhvi's comedy coupled with some clever drama happening. This is the major highlight of the movie that has largely lost its plot.

Nikhil in the role of an NRI is just okay. More than in the role of NRI, he seems to be quite at ease with the normal boy roles. Nanditha's role as English-crazy girl lacks fizz. Also the romantic thread developed between Nikhil and Nanditha is very weak.

Among the ensemble cast, Prudhvi and Anjali make impact. Better lines are written for Prudhvi and he has pulled them off effectively.  Anjali as don with feminist outlook has done justice to the character. Quite different to his villain roles, Sampath has played a character that is interesting. Sanjay Mishra has done the same role that he did in the original movie.

Suman, Rao Ramesh, Sithara, Shakalaka Shankar and Komali … all are just okay.

The classic title Sankarabharanam denotes the palace in the movie but it is clear that the title is used just for publicity purpose as it doesn't make difference to the story.

The film has decent technical and production values with neat cinematography (Sai Sriram) and adequate production design (art work and sets). Pace of the movie is not right, editor should have chopped off many scenes to tighten the screenplay in the first half. Music by Praveen is pretty ordinary. Don't know exact contribution of new director Uday Nandavanam's to the movie, as the credit rolls say the film is written and supervised (directorial supervision) by Kona Venkat. As writer Kona has shown his spark with some witty dialogues here and his mark is visible in later portions of the movie but on the whole it lacks zest.

Bottomline: Sankarabharanam is remake of a Hindi movie but only a portion of the story is taken from Phas Gaye Re Obama. Penultimate sequences and Prudhvi are the saving grace.