P Suneel Kumar Reddy’s films have never been known for even good technical values. He banks on the storyline, not even on performances. Based on his/her sensibilities, the audience perceives certain scenes as mere voyeuristic entertainment or genuine but raw treatment. If playing to the gallery has often not been in doubt, he has always held certain promise. But ‘Miss Leelavathi’ is the lowest common denominator where the director doesn’t even know something as fundamental as what to do with the one playing the title role.
Leela (Leelavathi) is a wannabe filmmaker and knows nothing in life but fun, frolic and Friday entertainment. She gets hooked to Karthik (Karthik) after a random call connects him and soon Leela is convinced that she wants him. After a one-night stand that goes haywire for him, Karthik realizes that Leela, having been starved emotionally, needs him come what may. Leela can’t appreciate that Karthik would find it difficult to spend time with her as he is married already. After trying to reach him for many days in vain, Leela attempts suicide. This is when Karthik realizes that Leela may actually be imbalanced and eccentric.
The film’s narration is indeliberately confusing. At one point, it looks like revolving around Leelavathi. The film comes across as a throwback to the 90s era B-grade stuff where the mistress scared the daylight out of the husband lacking in fidelity. Then ‘Miss Leelavathi’ becomes that feminist fare where the fashionable item-girl like friend of the housewives gives ‘gyan’ sessions to the unsuspecting wives on the extra-marital persuasions of their not-so-innocuous hubbies.
Did the director really go to the shoot with a script? The answer can be a confident ‘no’ as the climax scenes suggest. From starting off with unleashing an imaginative Leelavathi who talks poetically about mountains, the film degenerates into things like parodies (one spoofs ‘Businessman’, another spoofs ‘Attarintiki Daredi’), a parody song and an action-comedy-circus climax!
After watching the kind of good that Leelavathi renders to Karthik’s friends, you expect a certain kind of climax. But what plays out in the climax is simply unthinkable: there is no seriousness; we see two women fighting it out in a bullet-for-bullet moment!
Is Suneel so out of form that he doesn’t know what is cowardice and what is guilt? What is that reference to ‘Premabhishekam’ all about? And that audience versus filmmaker dialolgue? And that scene where the wives conduct a police-type spying operation on a flirtatious hubby? And that tussle over Karthik judging a film on the basis of reviewers’ judgment (‘Is that critic a Supreme Court judge?’ Leelavathi mirrors the angst of the filmmaker).
On the technical front, it is a disaster with not even the lip sync being right. The art director may not have known that he was not working for a children’s film. What is that Cycle Hudhud thing, please?
Leelavathi looks fit to be a vamp in a damp squib.
Verdict: A fake warning-oriented film that is an assault on the audience’s sensibilities. Immature dialogues, underdeveloped genre, rudderless narration – the film has it all.
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