Karthikeya 2

Karthikeya 2

Written and Directed by: Chandoo Mondeti
Starring: Nikhil Sidhartha, Anupama Parameshwaran

It’s an adventure travel film, with the core of film being the enigma of Lord Krishna. The beautiful part about the film is that in a lot of moments in the film, I found myself feeling that enigma. It made me think and wonder. It was like a nice foray into the world of Indian mythology, or rather history as the film says. For an adventure film like this, the most important thing is about where it goes. The film goes to a lot of uncharted territories which we don’t see coming and it keeps us interested. I enjoyed Srinivas Reddy’s character a lot, he made the film grounded and rooted. Although what didn’t work for me as much was, the film keeps slapping us with conflicts after conflicts and it’s very heavy on us. Some of the episodes only have some physical hurdles and they don’t feel like they’re strong links to move the plot forward either. Although action/adventure fans would enjoy these episodes, I would’ve liked fewer of them to be in the film, but really well explored.  

Also, the tonal shifts were a little tough to handle. One on hand, the film talks about the enigma of Lord Krishna, and on the other hand a man comes and severs another man’s head, like in a Boyapati film. Although I didn’t mind this because, this film tries a new format – adventure travel – which isn’t much explored in Telugu cinema and it does so by sticking to the Telugu meter of storytelling. So it was interesting to see this. The comedy in the film makes you chuckle a number of times – with all the actors like Praveen, Srinivas Reddy, Viva Harsha, etc. It was refreshing to see no romantic angle/love songs being there in a mainstream Telugu film. For me, in spite of the little issues I had, the film made me think, curious and feel that enigma, especially whenever the flute theme played.