Crazy and wacky

crazy loka
Kannada (U/A)
Cast: Ravichandran, Daisy Bopanna, Hansika Ponnacha, Suriya, Srinivas Prabhu, Avinash, Bharathi Vishnuvardhan, Ninasam Ramesh
Director: Kavitha Lankesh

Cast away Deveeri from your mind and watch Crazy Loka without preconceptions, says director Kavitha Lankesh.

However, having set the bar herself with her first foray into filmdom, Kavitha Lankesh has given discerning cinema the go-by, and jumped on the boxoffice bandwagon. Not that Deveeri was without faults. Still, it was an honest film, deservedly winning awards and accolades, including the national award for debut director for her.

Despite its honest intentions and social concerns, Crazy Loka, in its efforts to grab eyeballs of ordinary movie-goers, fails to deliver the message in a succinct fashion.
Kavitha tries to do this, through the golden-hearted Basavaraj Kattimani — a widower and a father of a college-going son — who enrols himself into the college that conferred a doctorate on him for his philanthropy. He does so, after being ridiculed by his rival Sadashiva Shetty who claims he bought the doctorate with his monetary contributions to the college.

The director, through her protagonist, seeks to press home the premise that age should not be a bar for education or even falling in love. Instead of a subtle approach, which would have helped in putting across the point powerfully, Kavitha takes the much easier mediocre path which only dilutes the very purpose of her well-intended film.

The message is simply lost in the silly happenings of the people on the campus — college head Ganapathi, cupid-struck Chandini, Ms Psychology teacher — Sarala, Basavaraj’s philandering son Abhay, and a bunch of binging students.

Crazy Loka, as goes its title, is truly a loony world that Kavitha weaves. And the viewer wallows in the make-belief she whips up. If a rotund Ravichandran wades through his role nonchalantly, Suriya fails to pass muster in his debut as a son with much misgivings about his pontificating papa. Daisy just flits around Basavaraj.

With nothing working for it, be it a string of non-sensical songs, or crazier happenings, Crazy Loka is like a man with two left feet trying to entertain with his dance.
Sorry Kavitha, it does not work despite your best of intentions.