Hope Review

These days every one is making films on commercial basis. Every producer wants to get back at least minimum returns on his project. Profit-motto keeps forcing the producers to take up subjects which have lots of commercial values. People, who make films for a social cause, are rare and one among such producers is Haranath Policherla, who is a successful and practicing doctor in the US, who had a commitment to strive to play an active role in bringing about a positive change in the Indian society. Director K Sathyanarayana, popularly known as Satish, has come with an excellent subject especially on the evergreen topic, which makes people to rethink and debate it even after returning from theatres. Not only directing the film, he himself provided story, screenplay and dialogues for the film, which is meant to create widespread awareness and spark off meaningful debate on the subject of education and its role in molding the society.

Puja (Kalyani) is the daughter of Rao (Sudarshan). She loses her mother in her childhood. She has a younger sister, who commits suicide, while studying Intermediate as she fails to get good marks. After a few days, Puja's father also dies of heart attack. Prof R.B.V.R. Murthy (Dr D. Ramanaidu), who worked in Columbia University and also a good journalist and the first Indian who bagged the first Pulitzer award, resides in the same apartment complex. He never comes out of his apartment not speaks to any other, except with his servant maid Lakshmiamma (Radhakumari). But the outside world believes that Prof. Murthy is dead some four years ago. Puja, instead of sitting idle, decides to do some research on the suicidal tendency among the children and collects material from the libraries and other sources.

Rajesh (Venu) is an Indian boy settled abroad. However, he returns to India on a two-month vacation, during which period, he thinks of shooting a documentary on Prof. Murthy. After reaching India, Rajesh meets his friends Shekeel, Priyanka and others. On one occasion, Rajesh accidentally meets Puja, by dashing her. She drops all the newspapers she collected for her research. While gathering them, Rajesh comes to know that one of his friends also committed suicide during his studies. Later Rajesh joins hands with Puja to continue her research. In the process, they take the help of Haranath, who runs schools, in the way Puja wants. The students studying in Haranath's school is away from mental stress and is very much happy. So, with the help of Rajesh, Haranath and others Puja continues her efforts to drive away the present system of education, which posed lots of stress on students. Was she able to achieve her goal? What kind of help did Prof. Murthy gives her? What kind of moral support she got from all her friends? What kind of debate she faced while holding a seminar on the present trends in education? Answers to all these questions form part of the climax.

As the film thought of giving a message to the society, the director and producer thought of telling the same through a top personality. In the process, they met Movie Moghal Dr D Ramanaidu. Till now, Ramanaidu played different roles in various films on his own banner. However, for the first time, he played a full length role and drove the message straight into the hearts of the audience. The specialty of the film is that once again S.P. Balasubrahmanyam lent his voice to the dialogues uttered by Dr D Ramanaidu. Kalyani excelled in her character and showed fantastic histrionics once again. The voice of Sunita perfectly matched her acting. Vizag Prasad, who played the role of Prof Subrahmayam also, did justice to his role. It seems the entire film was shot on just three locations. Another highlight of the film is that the film had the playback music from maestro Ilayaraja. It may be mentioned here that Ilayaraja had almost stopped working for the Telugu films, but acc