'Good Luck Sakhi' hit the screens today. In this section, we are going to review the latest box-office release.

Story:

Sakhi is a 25-year-old villager in Chittoor. She is a symbol of bad luck and has been failing at finding a groom. Her childhood friend Goli Raju believes that she has it in her to become a great rifle-shooter. A Colonel enters the scene and trains her to become a national champion. But the three characters have to confront some relationship issues.

Analysis:

Writer-director Nagesh Kukurnoor has made his Telugu debut more than 20 years after debuting as a parallel filmmaker. He has made a film that can work only in the parallel universe. He has chosen a wafer-thin plot for his most prestigious project in years. Mainstream actors like Keerthy Suresh, Jagapathi Babu and Aadhi Pinisetty have been enlisted but the plot itself seems to have been written many years before those actors were born.

Granted 'Good Luck Sakhi' is not a sports film. It's a sports romantic-comedy. But the sports part is so lazily done that we struggle to understand when and how Sakhi excels in the sport of rifle shooting. Before you know, she stumps a champion named Anjali (Shravya Varma in a cameo). Before you know, she stuns the whole village. Actually, no. They behave as if it doesn't matter.

The story wants us to understand Sakhi's nature. If we see her as a woman-child, some scenes can make sense, even if they don't work. She may be a bit fickle even though her focus is tremendous. A film like 'Guru' (starring Venkatesh) was terrific at bringing out the dichotomy. But 'Good Luck Sakhi' is content with underwritten scenes.

Aadhi Pinisetty calls himself Rama Rao because he is a terrific stage artist. The references to Sasirekha from Mayabazaar and the Mahabharatham look either affected or pretentious. There is no originality anywhere.

Devi Sri Prasad's songs are mostly montage ones. They are impressive but they look overdone for the lame situations that are there. Chirantan Das' camera work is average, while A Sreekar Prasad's editing doesn't look sincere. The dialogues don't deliver the desired impact.

Keerthy Suresh is surprisingly good and shines through a really terrible script. Jagapathi Babu is utterly dull and looks older than his age. Aadhi Pinisetty is nice, while Rahul Ramakrishna gets a poorly-written character. Raghu Babu and Venugopal are boring.

Verdict:

At a time when semi-sports movies are becoming big-scale, 'Good Luck Sakhi' is a poor cousin of Indie films made with mainstream stars. Avoid it.