Director feels sorry about those silly Balakrishna scenes

Before the release of ‘Palnati Brahmanayudu’ in 2003, the mass audience were thrilled.  The film, after all, was coming from the deadly combination of ‘Samarasimha Reddy’ and ‘Narasimha Naidu’.  Nandamuri Balakrishna, director B Gopal, writers Paruchuri Brothers and music director Mani Sharma… 1980s kids know the power of this combination pretty well.  

When the film released, eventually, it became a butt of ridicule.  Two particular scenes came in for incessant offline trolling when social media was completely absent.  In one of the scenes, Balayya’s finger flip turns out to possess a huge gravitational pull when it makes a chair airdash towards him.  In another iconic scene (iconic in a negative sense), Balayya scares away a train to go back by angrily moving his hand like a school teacher.  

Many years later, B Gopal has said that he regrets that he conceived such ridiculous scenes.  “The responsibility for the film’s failure entirely rests with me,” he recently confessed.  

This film nearly ended Gopal’s career.  Even though Prabhas and NTR Jr worked with him later, his career couldn’t be revived because these films were disasters.