Singam 123 Review

If there is anything that Tollywood has to be cured of anon, it is its lazy idea of parody.  ‘Singham 123’ is about spoofs on everything, including Sampoornesh Babu himself.  Sampu is so popular that James Cameron ropes him for Avtar 3; he will act in the movie without make-up, causing the director to celebrate the resultant savings in budget.  ‘Hrudaya Kaleyam’ wins 3 Oscars.  Sampu plays Singham 123, a cop with an extraordinarily improbable flashback of a prisoner.
 
Manchu Vishnu’s this production would have been as much a transitory sensation as Sampu’s fortuitously popular debut movie was.  But for the fact that there is no head and tail, to be precise, a semblance of a story, it won’t happen.
 
This film is essentially a disjointed gag fest..  It is a thematic sequel of ‘Hrudaya Kaleyam’.  It follows the same template of indulgent spoofs and confused presentation.
 
Singham 123 enters a town and challenges the most dreaded gangster.  The director’s idea of delivering laughs is having his hero spoof earnestly Balakrishna’s memorable lines from ‘Legend’.  The audience has no option but to derive fun from the fact that a ‘cosmetic nightmare’ like Sampu is thought of as a Milky Boy.
 
It beats imagination that someone thinks a whole film can be run on the basis of this single idea and no other. The last time we saw a whole film ride on the back of its hero was Gabbar Singh.  This one rides on the shoulders of Sampu and disastrously so.  There is a limit to what can be sold in the name of a Dasari Narayana Rao on steroids (this was our description in our Hrudaya Kaleyam's review, too). 
 
A scene or two is a parodic commentary on South Indian films.  Sampu’s diving into a lake in Singarayakonda, and his rising up in Africa is the most important example.  There is one scene which reminds us of EVV Sathyanarayna’s comedy style: the boy child is a burden whereas the girl child is not.  This funny idea is wasted by showing the mother-in-law as beating up a pregnant lady.  Rather than seem funny, it ends up looking crass and despicable.
 
Crass is what defines this film, complete with double entendre and more and more of the same: third-rate parody.  What is the fun in having a temperamental Sampu repeat punchlines by dime a dozen from Legend, Simha and parodying Gabbar Singh, Narasimha and even Sakhi and ‘Ennenno janmalabandham..’, again and again?
 
Adhar card jokes apart, there is some Annapurnamma deciding to shoo the Chief Minister away with broom.

There are all these characters who come and go, the only permanent feature of this hardly 95 minute film.

Lingam (Bhavani) is supposedly a bloody villain.  When he is in the scene, Sampu can get bloodier.  Sanam is his girl friend, there comes a moment when they have a coital encounter and thankfully, we are spared by not having a seductress song.

Akshat Ajay Sharma needs to refresh his idea of parody.  All the over indulgence and reference to the real life Sampu and producer Vishnu should have been avoided.

Verdict: The film tries to be a cross between Sudigaadu and its cousin, Hrudaya Kaleyam.