Chukkallo Chandrudu

Well, yesterday I watched the only movie missing in my Siddharth repertoire, Chukkallo Chandrudu. This one has been on my list of movies to watch for a while as I had heard that Siddharth wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay of this movie and Siva Kumar, Mani Ratnam's assistant in such movies as Alaipayuthe and Yuva was in the director's chair [1]. And what did I think of it? Well, not bad as Indian movies go will be my verdict I think. Why am I being so ambiguous and not my usual assertive self? It is because I am not able to put my finger on what was wrong with it. Lots of little things may be. They tried to embed comedy into the script a la Mani Ratnam, but not with as much success. But the plus to Chukkallo is that it was genuine Sit-com, not the slapstick kind of thing in NVNV, the previous Telugu release of Siddharth. May be the incessant mispronounced "dude" grated on me, I don't know. And I did not quite get Arjun. The premise in itself, namely that an ultra-nice-guy Arjun, pressured by his grandparents to get married decides to get re acquainted with some of his gal pals from his school days and hopefully marry one of them, is OK and is implemented onscreen alright as well. So what is it about Arjun that does not quite hang together? Oh, well, I am not able to see right now.

On other fronts, all the three girls were nice, even though portrayed as kind of nitwits. And Siddharth was his usual perfect self. The music was good, including the BGM. The songs, except Pichchi prema, had run-of-the-mill picturization with Siddharth and one of his girls running around a tree set in an exotic location. So, you can basically tune out and just hear the song. But I should also say that I was a teeny-weeny bit disappointed with the picturization of Pichchi prema (you can watch it on YouTube here). Now why is that? Because I know that Siddharth is a pretty good dancer (see for example the Fanaa song in Ayutha Ezhuthu, again on YouTube, here, he totally rocks in that, though being a Mani Ratnam song you can only see Siddharth in a few scenes) . But a Siddharth clad in floppy white SHOULD NOT dance with the one and only Prabhu Deva clad in sleek black and a Siddharth in sneakers SHOULD NOT dance with a Prabhu Deva in boots. Dancing with Prabhu deva is a big handicap to begin with (the only person I have seen overcome this with elan is Madhuri Dixit in Pukar). In addition to that, you burden the poor guy with bad costume choices, it makes him look rather silly.

All in all, a fun one time watch.(And by the way, you don't really need to know Telugu to watch this movie. There is so much English and Hindi mixed in that you can follow the conversation anyway!).

PS : Here is a link to the coverage on IndiaGlitz of this movie's launch. Watch the video to see Siddharth's hilarious attempts at speaking Telugu impromptu. But to give him credit, I should also point you to the video here at some Bommarillu associated function where you can see how much more at home in the language he has become now.