Blues before the wedding

After her flop debut Oka Manasu, Chiranjeevi’s niece Niharika Konidela returns with a lowbudget film opposite Sumanth Ashwin. Directed by debutant Lakshman Karya, it has the big production house UV Creations backing it. Akshara (Niharika) breaks up with her boyfriend Vijay (Raja) and meets Anand (Sumanth Ashwin) who she feels is the right person. After their engagement, an incident involving Anand changes her mind about him. She tells Anand, but cannot convey it to her parents. The families begin preparing for the marriage, and Akshara makes up her mind by the end of the film.

For his debut, director Lakshman Karya fits a lot of characters and family scenes into a small and routine love story. The film starts with Sumanth narrating his story in a flashback but does not gather pace. Indeed, it appears that Karya set out to make a web series or a TV serial.

Most situations are predictable and so is the cast. The film is replete with family scenes before a wedding, seen in plenty of films in Tollywood. Things move so slowly that the film appears to be longer than its run time of just above two hours.

Sumanth Ashwin should really work on his emotions. His dialogues and body language do not sync. It is only in the climax that he is slightly better. Niharika is woefully short on homework, she just stands and renders her dialogues without a single expression on her face. Murali Sharma, Naresh Sr, Pavitra Lokesh and Tulasi do their regular parts, which they have done in many films before. The music or the dialogues do not stand out, but the cinematography does.