'Raa Raa', starring Srikanth and others in key roles, hit the screens on Friday.  Here is our review.

Story:

Raj Kiran (Srikanth) is a budding director whose career is in the dumps.  He has made three flops and his father dies of ill-health.  The going gets tougher for him as his mother falls sick and is hospitalized.

This is when Raj Kiran decides to prove himself by doing a horror film.  Along with his team members (played by Jeeva, Nazia, Venu, and others), he shifts to a bungalow.  This is invariably haunted by some 'comedy dayyalu' (played by Raghu Babu, Hema, Ali and others).

In an 'Anando Brahma' twist, the humans scare away the ghosts.  But, then, these are only 'comedy dayyalu'.

The big twist arrives with the entry of Mani Kandana (Sitha Narayan), who is a tough nut to crack.

Analysis:

'Raa Raa', for all we know, was directed by two people.  While saying this, the producer and the hero have maintained that the film has no director.  While this is self-contradictory, it may actually be a Freudian Slip.

As scare fests go, this film hardly comes close to any genuine horror-comedy (in any case, this is a very rare breed).  So much has been exploited about this genre that it will take another Maruthi (Mahati Raghav is overrated) to get something new out of it.  Until then, we have to resign ourselves to watching stock scenes in horror-comedies.

Stock scenes are one thing.  Inconsistencies are another.  One half of 'Raa Raa' doesn't seem to believe in what the other half says about the body parts of ghosts.

There are a bevy of comedy faces, ranging from Shakalaka Shankar, Getup Sinu, Venu, Adurs Raghu, Posani Krishna Murali, Raghu Babu, Hema, Ali and others.  Srikanth himself takes it upon himself to deliver quite a few laughs.  The ease in his dialogue-delivery is quite intact.

At the end of the day, the film lacks soul and it's glaring.  Srikanth's sincerity aside, the climax passes muster.  The rest of it, however, is much ado about nothing.

The trap of casualness is something horror-comedies fail to escape.  'Raa Raa' is no different.  The likes of 'Intlo Dayyam Nakem Bhayam' were atrocious in treating even a serious point rather lightly.  That never works.  Also, the two sets of comedians seem to be there because of a turf war between the film's two directors who live in two separate worlds.

Loudness is the film's second nature.  Whoever convinced our directors that the ghosts have always got to be caricaturish and ever-shouting?

For a film whose writing falls flat and whose first director exited the project midway, the technical departments put in only a bad job rather than an outlandish one.  The cinematography and the music are a put-off.  Because the genre has been overdone, the technicians needed to be more than conventional.

Verdict:

'Raa Raa' needed to resolve its own contradictions before presenting itself at the theatres.  Stock ideas, mediocre performances, cartoonish characters, you have them all.

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