Hora Hori Review

Teja's male leads have certain hallmarks.  They are timid to begin with; who turns them aggressive is, of course, the heroine, ably backed by the volatile mother.  Barring '1000 Abaddalu', his heroes have been innocuous.  In 'Hora Hori', Teja takes his male lead to new heights of sensitivity.  Skandha (Dileep) is a hypersensitive guy whose shirt might require no washing if he was to shed tears every time he wept!  In an attempt to present a Mr. Poor Guy-who-is-hapless-and-penniless, Teja makes Skandha appear needlessly overemotional.  Consequently, you almost don't feel for him when he cries for a big reason.  By now, you would have already watched him cry more than twice!

Whether or not Teja follows the now done-to-death 'Jayam' formula, what he clearly has is the 'Jayam' hangover.  Nithin was there asking the heroine to wear 'pattilu'; here you have Dileep asking the heroine to do typing.  There it was Duvvasi Mohan mocking at his boss; here it is a sidekick posing his boss 'dharma sandeham' to evoke a similar sense of comedy.   The forested landscape is there, a song involving the love birds while facing existential crisis; there is a similar element here as well, but the difference is that Dileep is so excessively timid that he mixes singing and crying on one occasion -  when Mythili informs him about the imminent existential crisis.

Mythili (Daksha) is the sister of an ACP.  Basaveswar (Chaswa), a violent goonda, sees her when he calls on the ACP and expresses the desire to marry her by hook or by crook.  The ACP and the sister spurn the villain, who creates bloodbath by killing Mythili's groom.  Another murder later, she slips into depression and the family (these members barring the ACP behave like Krishna Vamsi's elders or Teja's quirky characters, depending on the situation) takes her away to a village in Karnataka.

In the village, the pathological Mythili is transformed into an extra-observant one by the magical touch of our very soft-natured hero. They become love birds after the kabaddi-like typing series (in fact, Dileep trains her to type with both hands.  She never needed training to type super-fast with one finger, by the way).  Meanwhile, Basaveswar befriends Skandha as destiny would have it.

After presenting a super-violent villain, Teja degenerates the character into a comedy villain who kills his time watching romantic classics and being a buffoon.  The caricaturish presentation apart, his lines lack any sense of tyranny after a while. Some loopholes like Mythili's brother doubting that she may have reciprocated Basaveswar's love could have been avoided.  Why does he doubt that?  Wasn't Mythili terrified of Basava?  Is this a case of Teja's compulsive liking to have a fiery male thwarting the heroine's love affair?

The male lead himself leaves little impact; for the time he is seen, his ordinary looks don't seem endearing at all.  Daksha has good looks but her voice is a let down.

Seema as the hero's grandmother gives a convincing performance; in a scene, the sentiment is apparently overboard.  The ACP is a good find.  Chaswa lacks the zing to portray an important character of this scale..

Kalyani Koduri's music is fairly good; the BGM is another plus.  The cinematography captures the rainfed atmospherics well.

Verdict: A 'Jayam' hangover, a villain reduced to a caricature, a hero who over-emotes, dialogues that lack the zing.

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