Film: (+) Plus
Cast: Anant Nag, Chetan Chandra, Shalini Vadnikatti
Director: Gadda Viji
It does not take much effort to fail. With Plus, if director Gadda Viji and script writer Rithesh had set out to fail, well, they have effortlessly succeeded.
A movie with bits of arithmetic and a few phobic elements thrown in, and heaven and hell added to the mix, has just one ‘plus’. It’s set to become a classic example of ‘How not to make a film’ and ‘how not become a scriptwriter’ in film schools.
Gadda Viji's admirable effort’ revolves around the character of Anant Nag who is betrayed by his friends (Suresh B, Karisubbu, Ravishankar and Suchendra Prasad). They kill his wife Sudharani, a scientist who had achieved an important breakthrough related to memory loss. How Anant Nag’s character uses his son Vivek (Chetan), his girlfriend Nidhi (Shalini Vadnikatti) and family friend (played by Ritesh) as weapons to bring down the evil elements and convert all negatives to positives forms the ‘spineless’ plot, which does not carry any production value except Anant Nag’s makeover in this film.
Though Gadda Viji violates every rule of Sandalwood screenplay writing, with the hope of finding space among the makers of unconventional films, he seems to have locked himself out. The director does try to bring some element of mental and emotional complexity among the characters, which is handled well, yet never quite explained.
Except for a couple of senior actors like Anant Nag, Ravi Shankar and Sudharani, every other character has an ambiguous edge. Chetan Chandra has concentrated on his body rather than acting. Ritesh has taken his role quite casually and Shalini Vadnikatti adds no emotion to her character. B J Bharath’s music and the background scores along with Ravi Basrur are the only other highs of this completely miscalculated 151-minute flick.