Rajani

This ‘Rajani’ is not about Rajnikanth, but is not short on style though. Thriller Manju saves the producer’s money wherever possible to spend on his trademark action shots.  

Rajani is the quintessential Man with the Golden Heart, who gifts away his job to solve someone else’s problem. The moment he sets eyes on Sandhya, he knows he has found his soulmate. But there is a small problem: Jakka, a notorious rowdy, has fallen for her. The journey between courtship and marriage is what makes the story (by Shiva Akula here) interesting.

A ‘credit-worthy’ remake of the Ravi Teja starrer ‘Krishna,’ Rajani has Upendra stretching himself to please his fans fed on a ‘Buddhivanta’ diet. Upendra is still under the Panchamrutha hangover and it is left for comedy kings Rangayana Raghu, Sadhu Kokila and Bullet Prakash to provide the laughs. Credit to Ramnarayan for evoking some real laughs.

None of the trio have gone overboard either, which is a relief. As for Thriller Manju, he has not even ‘risked’ changing even Raghu’s character Babi’s name- here, ‘i’ is replaced with ‘y’.
Janardhan Babu’s camerawork is workmanlike; there is no room for any expectation. The GI/DI works appear to have been done on a shoe-string budget; the rest go up in smoke or get smashed, like the umpteen number of vehicles Manju has used in the film.

Coming to music, it is refreshing to see that Hamsalekha has loosened up a bit. He blasts some ‘jhakaas’ music for the front-benchers while some sensitive listeners are bound to be amazed at the cheek of the lyrics in two songs (Thriller Manju aims to thrill, after all). This Rajani is one ‘fultoo’ entertainer.