Paramathma review

Legend - paramaathma (Pa) mungaaru maLe (MM) gaaLipaTa (G) manasaare (Ma)

The review is based on content and value for money and time.

Starting with content.

The framing of scenes is such a painful repeat of earlier Yograj movies - you get many-a-Deja Vu feels:

• - Pa's college song looks like Suvvi Suvvali of MM
• - Rabbit (Devdas) of MM becomes a shiny mysterious creature in Pa - but this time it is pointless.
• - The "family talk scene" in Pa with people sitting around on steps is repeated in G ending in supposed separation
• - Deepa Sannidhi (DS) of Pa looks so similar in her looks to Daisy Bopanna of G except the DS can act and also look good at times.
• - Anant nag plays the same zombie role in all movies (Pa, MM, G) - is he inspired from "father-of-a-waste-son" from Manirathnam's yuva?
• - a hero promoting poor academics (yet he has a heart of gold and succeeds elsewhere) thus "connecting" to waste bodies is repeated in Pa, MM, MS. No wonder there are many people liking this movie - some sort of validation to their lackadaisical attitude.
• -- hero falls in love by just "looking at the heroine" a.k.a "love at first sight":Pa, MM, MS :tailor made for waste bodies in the state.
• - yakshagaana theme in songs from G is repeated in Pa
• - major portions in malenaaDu area is a common string in MM, G, Pa - they all have that "enchanting place" thingy which makes a backdrop for the love theme. Yawn.

Now to other features of the movie:

• - Rangayana Raghu (RR) evokes a few laughters but is loud and overacts at many places. On the other hand, Dattatreya's restraint and subtlety wins.
• - Almost all main characters in the movie except the hero act mentally unsound and emotionally unstable - DS, Avinash, RR - they like to be loud and over-charged at silly instances - as if to shout out "my character also is trying it's best"
• - If the tacky "varaaha avataar" in gaaLipaTa(G) killed your brain cells, watch out for the hero's conquest of Mt.Everest and China sequence - it can be injurious to your sanity. I actually thought the hero was in a fake Ad shoot and it was meant to be funny. But the comedy came much later and took even longer to go away.
• - Most characters look like they are there merely to promote how good or how cool the hero is - they were just created with that "job" in mind
• - Aindrita's character doesn't know what she is doing in the movie - she is a tool for the hero to tell his story.
• - The wasteful "hero's' friends" are there to validate the hero's actions
• - the coloured man and the promiscuous euro girl in teerthahalli - I cant even place them - were they placed to add the "colour quotient"?
• - the North Karnataka couple in the kambaLa-like race were created to show the benevolence of the hero
• - and what was that thing about the hero's heart and his hearty dad doing the tests? May be my brain froze there.

Now the very few plus points:

• + Puneeth Rajkumar does well as the lead - the entire film is on his shoulders and on - even DS acts decently when she is not forced to laugh uncontrollably or shout angrily.
• + V. Harikrishna who has done a smashing job with the music - pleasing and refreshing
• + cinematography is just about good but falls short on imagination shown in MM and G - perhaps because of the repeat sequences.
• + Choreography is decent

Yograj Bhat has been known for making movies with style, colour, good music and great packaging.

Since MM, the health of his movies in terms of gripping narrative and content have been on the decline.

In Pa, it seems to have reached a place where it should rest in peace; if not we could be looking at more brain-free kannada movies with the sales pitch of "well packaged, good music and picturisation, punchy dialogs and comedy" which actually means:

well packaged=nothing absorbing or no message - just a re-hash of formulas that have worked before,

good music and picturisation=to make up for the craters in the story and characterisation,

punchy dialogs and comedy=sometimes funny, many-a-time loud and painful

paramathma is a Dabba movie, repackaged crap and not worth the time and money and even the petty entertainment it offers.

As a viewer and an enthusiast of Yograj Bhat movies, I feel simply disappointed.

Quick upasamhaara on a strange trend these days:

What would you say about a movie:

• called "Yogaraj" with the heroine being from an earlier Yograj Bhat movie and turns out to be crap?
• called "Lifu Ishtene" with the hero being from an earlier Yograj Bhat movie and turns out to be crap?
• whose first news appears saying the tagline will be written by Yograj Bhat and that it's director is from "bhaTra camp"?