Sivamani 9 8 4 8 0 2 2 3 3 8

Probably the only movie with a cell phone number in its title. Not surprisingly, cell phones get a lot of prominence in the movie.

First, positives-Intriguing music, well-knit over all story, couple of good songs, scenes from Kerala and finally, Asin.

The ‘Ilaya raja’-like background (and title) music raises many questions in your mind and is probably best suited to listen to in an introspection session on a beach. The movie starts showing waves on a beach with a fair share of the sounds waves make. One of very few movies I replayed titles because it has great music to go with it. A couple of songs (Yenatiki, Mona Mona) are decent.

Overall story resembles that in “Never Been Kissed.” It starts well with the “second heroine” (Rakshita) finding a bottle on the Visakhapatnam beach in which the heroine (Vasanta-Asin) sends her parting message to the hero before they part for the next couple of years. Rakshita looks at the message and raises several questions. “Who wrote the message? Why did the “sender” have to put it in a bottle?” I guess it is a printed matter in Malayalam with the message in Telugu. “Why two languages? Did the couple met since?” Rakshita is the link between the newspaper that publishes the story and the couple. The story is a run away hit with its readers getting ready to “pranalaina istam” for the couple.

The story intertwines the past and the present revealing why the Telugu speaking hero stays in Kerala, how the couple gets together, why the heroine disappears suddenly, etc. Many parts of the movie are shot in Kerala. The camera man does a decent job with capturing Kerala’s beauty but no where does Kerala come alive. It is at best an average job. I guess even if he had done a good job may be that will still not liven up the entire movie. [Putting best ppl in one or two jobs will not make the product a winner. You can only maximise locally. We need best guys in all speres of a company to multiply results]

Asin – did a decent job. I was pleasantly surprised to see her name in the titles cos I did not know that she acted in this movie until then. Her last movie I watched was Gharshana. It was a great movie. She played a person with good looks, great education and a teacher in a school. Seemed like a killer combination to me. [Had that lady come alive from the movie, I would have proposed to her ;) Alas she may not be as smart in the real world!] I watched that movie twice and wanted to watch it another time. I dont think the CDs are out yet.

The movie starts well with those questions gripping your attention. And then it goes on a slippery slope till the end. The second half is just another dumb telugu movie with patched up sequence, ill-timed songs, mandatory “fightings” and a couple of songs aimed at “masses.” That is all. It is just another movie.

Why do directors fail to understand the essence of a successful movie? If you do an average job on all fronts, it becomes just that – an average job. Only those movies will be successful that ‘push the frontier’ and be an ‘outlier.’ Otherwise, you are going with luck. Goodluck!

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