Manasuku Nachindi - Movie Review

'Manasuku Nachindi', starring Sundeep Kishan, Amyra Dastur, Tridha and others, hit the screens on Friday.  Let's find out what works and what doesn't.  

Story:

Sooraj (Sundeep Kishan) and Nithya (Amyra Dastur) elope to Goa.  They are fun-loving and want to get the most out of their lives.  Rich enough, their only purpose is to discover themselves.  

Nithya turns a Nature-lover in Goa, revelling in the lap of the ocean.  As she is immersed in it, Sooraj falls for the charms of Nikki (Tridha Choudhary), Nithya's sexy yoga student.  

When Priyadarshi scolds him for messing up with his career by faking his skill at Nature photography, Sooraj has a moment of self-discovery.  From this point, he goes in search of his passion.  Meanwhile, it dawns upon Nithya that she loves Sooraj, her favourite buddy thus far.  

A predictable rom-com involving the two main characters, Nikki and Abhay (Arun Adith) follows.  

What works:

Perhaps Mahesh Babu's voice-over (which is less than 2 minutes) is the one element that works. The superstar speaks in the language of a romanticized Nature The technical elements scrape through at some places. Ravi Yadav's cinematography captures well the aesthetic locations, enabled also by CG work.

What doesn't work:

Debutante director Manjula Ghattamaneni makes the film like an extended short-film. When Amyra's character talks about feeling Nature, she sounds more like a hippie spiritual guru meant for rich people.  The lines she speaks while experiencing Nature are ordinary, despite they are penned by 'current hot-shot writer' Sai Madhav Burra.

The audience doesn't feel the Nature that Nithya is enjoying. The director here has totally failed in conveying the child-like joy of the character, barring an occasional good visual of her dancing with the flowers. The character arc of the two leads is in an outdated format. The hero is down because he doesn't know how to do photography in the right way. The heroine gives him some instant gyan about doing things with love so that money only becomes a mere consequence. Such messaging has been heard many times.

The motif of meditation is important because it's when he closes his eyes that our hero realizes who he actually loves. But even this idea has been seen in other variations since 'Dil Chahta Hai'.  

The way Sooraj falls for Nikki, and the way Nithya falls for the "cute" Abhay leaves much to be desired.

Manjula's daughter (Baby Jhanvi) seems to be there because the director thought of practicing nepotism. The butterfly scene featuring the child should have been with Nithya instead. The scenes involving the child actually make the film feel like a children's film!  

The way our hero becomes a skilled photographer within a few hours is utterly laughable.  As only filmi luck would have it, Abhay runs the National Geographic magazine.  Wow! 

The meditation-cum-yoga scenes come undone.  Nithya is attracted to Abhay and when he arrives in the class, she shifts from meditation to 'dance yoga'. For God's sake, scenes later, it's revealed that she loves Sooraj.

Priyadarshi and others are there only to add a few more clichéd scenes and that's all. The elders, like Nasser and others, are easily pliable.  

Performance Score:

After doing meaty roles in Tamil, Sundeep Kishan has chosen a rom-com consciously. He wanted to play a fun-filled, romantic character because people loved him in 'Joru', 'Beeruva' and 'Venkatadri Express'.  But the routine character that he plays leaves nothing for him to explore. He has described 'Manasuku Nachindi' as a moments-driven film.  But those 'moments' hardly move us!  

Amyra Dastur is okay.  Tridha and others are utterly wasted. 

Bottomline:

'Manasuku Nachindi' starts off as a feel-good holiday film. It soon turns into a clichéd, lazy movie that packs in stock ideas. The triangular love story falls flat even before the routine climax hits like a meteor.