'Nippu' Review: No Fire, Only Smoke

Rating: 2/5Banner: Bommarillu Films
Cast: Ravi Teja, Deeksha Seth, Rajendra Prasad, Pradeep Rawat, Sriram etc
Music: SS Thaman
Cinematographer: Sarvesh Murari
Editing: Gowtham Raju
Director: Guna Sekhar
Producer: YVS Chowdary
Release Date: 17 Feb 2012

‘Nippu’, the film that’s publicized as the one that is coming from three friends YVS, Guna Sekhar and Ravi Teja has hit the screens today. Let us see how it entertains the audience.

Story:
An okay tale, the story begins with Surya (Ravi Teja) who owns a gym centre and he also has a good friend Sri (Sriram). Surya is in love with his friend’s sister Meghna (Deeksha) and after some cat and mouse games, she also falls in love. After a while, Sri goes to Saudi for job and there he falls in love with Vaishnavi (Bhavana).

The story takes a turn when Surya goes to Saudi to celebrate the birthday of Sri and is shocked when the Saudi police arrest Sri on charges of murdering Vaishnavi. He is sentenced to death. Now, the only way for Surya is to get the signature from Vaishnavi’s parents to acquit Sri. And that happens to be Raja Goud (Pradeep Rawath), the bad guy whom Surya has been fighting all along. What happens from there forms the rest of the story.

Performances:
Ravi Teja gave his hundred percent with extra energy and sharp dialogue delivery. Usually he shoulders all his films but he didn’t have that scope due to screenplay errors.

Deeksha Seth is yet to improve on her acting. Though she has good height, she must tone up her body if she is planning for a long career as a heroine. She suits Ravi Teja’s height which is the saving factor.

Rajendra Prasad was elegant and effective. His versatility in expressions and emotions always makes a strong presence onscreen. He was good.

Sriram was handsome as usual and he delivers to the required level. Pradeep Rawath was good and evil enough. Bhavana was brief but cute. Brahmanandam brought few smiles. Supreeth was standard. Krishnudu, Brahmaji, Mukul Dev, Jayaprakash Reddy, Dharmavarapu and others were there to fill the gaps.

Highlights:

• Cinematography
• Interval bang
• Ravi Teja’s performance

Drawbacks:

• Weak screenplay
• Outdated fights
• Slow pace

Analysis:
The story line of Nippu is very simple: what the hero does to save his friend who is battling for his life. There is absolutely no excitement in the storyline and the director has to put in a lot of hard work to make a film out of it. It is really a tight rope walking for the director. Despite his best efforts, there is no guarantee that this routine story would fetch any success. Instead of taking a lot of care to make a film with this silly storyline, Gunasekhar made a mess of it with his grossly ill-planned script. In the first half, one would feel as it one is watching a Japanese or Korean film without sub-titles.

Given the fact that it has noted names like Gunasekhar and Ravi Teja, the expectations ran high. However, it appears that Guna Sekhar is yet to come out of his shell. Though he was careful in not going overboard with the budget his brilliance as a director was missing barring the pre-interval twist.

For any film to be successful, the screenplay is main oxygen. And that failed to work here. Same goes with the dialogues. They ended up being verbose during key moments. The production values were generous but though the money was being seen, it didn’t have that kind of content to justify. The key scenes were unable to deliver the depth. For instance,

• Pradeep Rawath’s wife gets realization and wants to help Ravi Teja but all it takes is just 5 seconds.
• First half goes with back and forth narration and the real story is missing, it took a while for the audience to realize that a flashback episode was happening.

Overall, the film runs on a flimsy storyline, weak execution and most of the focus was on the presentation than filling it with substance. At one point, one begins to wonder whether it is the same Guna Sekhar who made films like ‘Choodalani Vundhi’ ‘Okkadu’ etc.

Setting aside the commercial calculations of the film, if one were to go by the content part of it, the title “Nippu” suits the film. The audiences should thank their stars, as the film has been released before the onset of summer. Had it been released in mid-summer, it would have been a frying-pan-to-fire experience for the audiences!

At the box office, the film will have decent openings but the presence of ‘Love Failure’ and the arrival of ‘Poola Rangadu’ is sure to cause a big dent.

Bottom line: No big flames