Film: Vaishakam
Cast: Harish, Avantika Mishra, Sai Kumar, Rama Prabha
Director: B Jaya
Rating:
B Jaya’s fourth directorial turns out to be another romantic entertainer albeit generously toned with family emotions. Vaishakam is a love story that is driven by emotions — not just of the girl and boy in love, but also their family and those around them. The story pans out against the backdrop of a residential colony which plays witness to not just the plotline, but also the ups and downs of their lives.
Venu (Harish), a reckless youngster who lives with his friends in an apartment, is the bane of every resident’s existence in the colony. Troubling the families living in the apartment complex and the colony is his full-time job. The residents also put up with him in his fear. While his careless attitude sums up his character, his kind heart and chivalry are to be noted courtesy a fight where he saves a girl in trouble.
Meanwhile Bhanumati (Avantika Mishra) fakes Venu to be her boyfriend to rent a house in the same apartment. She sets up a beauty parlour and goes out of her way to teach Venu a lesson for messing with her. She provokes, teases, abuses and even kisses him at one point to keep him restrained.
When Venu realises he has fallen for Bhanu and confesses, she ticks him off. Venu takes this as an insult and conspires to throw her out of the apartment. To make sure he lets her stay, Bhanu brings Venu’s paralysed mother (Eashwari Rao) to stay with her and takes care of her. Much to the annoyance of Venu, his mother too prefers staying with Bhanu to him.
To get back at her, Venu kidnaps Bhanu’s father and makes him live with him. Why Bhanu is doing what she is doing, why Venu despite being a nice person, troubles the residents, and do these two end up actually falling in love sums up the plot.
Vaishakam’s songs were picturesquely shot in Kazakhstan, while the music was catchy, but in parts. The film was visually appealing, but in terms of dialogues more often than not felt pretentious; possibly due to the unnecessary and excessive use of alliterations.
Comedy, on the other hand, seemed forced as every character including the two leads struggled to make every scene funny. Speaking of which, Avantika and Harish did a fair job even as newcomers. Vaishakam’s strength would have been the actual storyline which was crammed too much into the pre-climax. If the plotline was a little evenly distributed throughout the film, it would have been much more engaging than it originally is. However, the film attempts to throw light on how human relations have taken a backseat in the current day and age, and manages to do that.