BANGALORE: Kalmanja, the much awaited and hyped movie, is Komal’s fourth venture as the hero. His previous movies were Gargasa, Chamkaayisi Chindivudaayisi and Varevah. Kalmanja offers a very good opportunity for Komal to showcase his acting skills. However, Komal, who is the producer apart from playing the lead role in the movie, allows other character artistes to overtake him.
It is good to see Komal at his best during the pre-intermission session. His dialogue delivery and gestures are worthy of applause. His confession of watching Kannada movies on TV makes the audience giggle for a while.
If the unnecessary and incongruous sequences during the post-intermission session are of any indication, it seems the director was in a dilemma about his target audience for this movie. The second-half is neither for the general audience nor for the children.
Komal has proved that he too can shake his leg with glamorous heroines and also can threaten or frighten rowdies with his muscle power in reel life.
The movie is about Manja alias Kalmanja (Komal), the son of a maid who aims to become a script writer. His owner’s (Ramesh Bhat) daughter (Indira) falls in love with him. Enraged by this, Indira’s father asks Manja to write a love letter to Vasumathi assuming that she doesn’t exist. His intention was to make Indira hate Manja for his love affair with Vasumathi. However, the love letters reach the girl by name Vasumathi (Indira) who is all set to commit suicide after being cheated by her greedy relatives.
Circumstances compel, Manja and Vasumathi to travel on the same bus to Bangalore. While Vasumathi identifies Manja with the help of his photograph, he is not aware that she is the same girl he wrote the love letters to. He narrates the script to a director (Guruprasad) but the latter is impressed by Vasumitha’s version. Both of them are about to fall in love when Indira appears on the scene and makes it tough for them. However, she realises the difficulties of Vasumathi and tries to help her.
Among the heroines, it is Udayatara who walks away with all honours. She is good in the sentiment as well as the dance sequences. Ishwarya Nag is beautiful but stoic throughout the movie. Thriller Manju, Raju Talikote, Sharan and Guru Prasad have provided good support.Emil has provided good music. Songs are good.
It is worth watching only if you can put up with slow narration during the post-intermission session.
maheswarareddy@expressbuzz.com