Hanuman Movie Review: Director Prashant Varma, who has made various films like Kalki and Zombie Reddy, has made Hanuman a superhero fantasy story. It was a bold decision to release it as a medium film with young hero Teja Sajja in the Sankranthi Big Film competition. But this bold decision paid off. Not only in Telugu but also in other languages it is showing success. Let's see its features...
Hanuman movie story:
In 1998, in a big city, an evil boy named Michael is trying to become Superman. The evil boy kills his parents for teaching him to use Superman's powers only for good. In the present, Anjanadri is a remote village, where a boy named Hanumanthu (Teja Sajja) commits petty thefts. He grew up with his older sister Anjamma (Varalakshmi Sarath Kumar). He loves Meenakshi (Amrita Iyer) who returns to the village after studying medicine. In the village, a village head named Gajapati (Raj Deepak Shetty) collects taxes from the people and harasses them.
Hanumanthu falls into the river in an attempt to save Meenakshi who is in danger against the village headman. In that river, Hanumanthu finds a mani named 'Rudhiramani' which has divine power. That gives him superpowers. While Hanumanthu is fighting Gajapati with those powers, Michael (Vinay Roy) comes to the village for Rudhiramani and starts attacking. Now the rest of the story is about who won the fight between Hanuman for good and Michael for evil with Rudhiramani.
Analysis:
These days, when action movies are known as killing movies with knives, freshness has been added by making it an adventure thriller with comedy, away from violence. Moreover, instead of taking an actor with a mass-action heroism image, taking Teja Sajjana, who does not have any image of an ordinary youth, is also a plus for this effort. The first half took more than an hour to establish the evolution of an ordinary villager without any special features to become a superhero and face enemies. After finding Rudhiramani, when he becomes a superhero with superpowers, the audience cheers. From here on, it's a row.
This full-on comedy superhero adventure has another level of thrill with Hanuman himself coming from the Himalayas in the climax. But it also has drawbacks like regular comedy scenes, dull narration, and unnecessary characters. If the length of the film was shortened from two and a half hours to two hours, these defects would have been removed.
Performances - Techniques:
Teja Sajja's presence in rural roles in old movies like the simple Chiranjeevi helped the connectivity. It aptly shows both sides of a weak common man becoming extraordinary with superpowers. Comedy brings the audience closer to acting. There are flaws like lack of feeling in the romance with the heroine and lack of sentiments with the older sister character. The action scenes and the epic fights in the climax are well done. It is a record for a small hero to get a big hit Sankranti.
Heroine Amrita Iyer has good looks and acting talent. Varalakshmi Sarathkumar in the role of the hero's older sister is another time to enjoy the action scenes. As villains, Raj Deepak Shetty and Vinay Roy once again played a stylish villain role. Getup Srinu, Satya, Jabardast Rohini, and others are funny characters. And Samudrakani, who comes as Vibhishan, played a cool role.
Technically good shooting on a low budget is the thing that makes the director the lucky charm of the producers. But the producer's announcement that the budget has increased three times. VFX, songs, and background music (by three music directors) have been given the best possible quality. Climax 15 minutes of background music is at the level of big movies.