'Ragada' Review

Starcast: Nagarjuna, Anushka, Priyamani, Pradeep Rawat, Kota Srinivasa Rao, Bramhanandam, Raghubabu, Dharmavarapu Subramaniam, Master Bharath. Director:Veeru Potla

Producer:Shivaprasad Reddy

Music: S S Thaman

Rating: 2/5


Ragada is a typical Telugu film with reel load of fights and six songs a stanard staple for hero-centric movie in Tollywood.

'Ragada' is a story of Satya alias Kadapodu(Nagarjuna) who comes to Hyderabad with a motive.Peddhanna (Pradeep Rawat) is a gangster operating in the city with three important goons executing his orders.GK( Dev Gill) is Peddhanna's principal opponent. Satya saves GK from Peddhanna's men when the latter tries to kill him. Impressed with him, GK requests Satya to assist him in fighting Peddhanna. Sirisha(Anushka) is the daughter of GK's partner and stays in his house. With Satya and Sirisha meeting quite often, there is attraction and romance between them.Peddhanna sends his men to Satya's hometown Kadapa, to find out the whereabouts of his family.The story takes an interesting turn when Ashtalakshmi,(Priyamani) a bramhin girl requests Satya to help her family from Peddhanna.The rest of the story is full of twists and turns that makes for an interesting watch on whom is Satya in love with, what is the connection between his family and him coming to Hyderabad and his rivalry with gangster Peddhanna.

Nagarjuna looks stunning and is every man's envy. Infact a few dialogues and scenes in the movie revolve around the topic of Nag's handsome personality.He looks a million bucks in every shot. However, the Rayalaseema accent didn't suit the hero. He couldn't make 'Manchiki Cheruku gadda.. cheduki Ragada' applaude worthy.There are too many fights in this film and the actor pulls it off His comic timing with Bramhanandam is perfectly entetaining. Anushkha and Priyamani don't have much to do in the movie and are seen dancing more than acting in this film. One gets the feeling if Anushka agreed to do this movie more out of obligation than out of interest as her role doesn't leave an impact on the audience.

Bramhanandam manages to tickle your funny bones with his trademark histrionics.Kota Srinivasa Rao, Pradeep Rawat, Dharmavarapu Subramaniam did well. Dev Gill didn't impress with his performance at all. Child artiste Bharath was at his best and gave Bramhanandam a tough contest on screen.Raghubabu is cliched and yawn inducing.Priyamani delivered a better performance than Anushka in the little acting she got to do in this movie.There are half a dozen villains in this action flick and all of them gave whistle worthy performance.Charmee who lost oodles of weight looked smashing in the item number. She moved her butt with a rocket speed and set the screen ablaze with her movements.
The story is very predictable cocktailed with fights, songs and comedy. Over one and a half hour of the film has fights.

Infact, every ten minutes in the movie has a fight scene. Nagarjuna does a Vijayakanth by killing a villain not by shooting him but by making him eat bullets.The dialogues are not competent enough to make you feel the emotion in the scene. Most of the dialogues give the audience a feeling of deja vu. For instance, the hero's sister screams in a scene, ' Champeyi annayya.. vaadini Champeyi' which reminds one of Ghazini and several other films with similar crowd cheers while hero gears up to murder the villain.

Thaman's music was in tandem with the mass storyline of the movie. Three songs are worth listening to in this album. The locations in Jordan and Greece chosen to shoot the songs were feast to eyes. Bramhanandam's comedy in this film is far better than his painfully boring performance in his other releases this season.Comic scenes with Bramhy and Bharath come as a great relief in between innumerable fights.Pradeep Rawat is seen wearing the same black Kurta all through the movie which makes one wonder why.

The director failed to exploit Pradeep's acting skills in the script.The story in this film is no different from hundred others that released in the past one decade. The cinematography is not worth a mention. Despite several glitches, the movie doesn't bore as much as it should because of perfect screenplay. Every fight is followed by a comedy scene or a song which makes the audience bear the otherwise cliched movie.

If you are a regular Telugu movie goer, you have already watched 'Ragada' in several movies before.Search for other options of entertainment this weekend because Ragada doesn't offer it for the money you pay.

(Review published in The New Indian express on 25-12-2010)