Vizag is an interesting city and my friends live just one building away from their version of Worli Sea Face. Around afternoon, when I had finished with my work, we found ourselves at loose ends and I thought of checking out a local Telugu film. S had to go to work, but C was free and of all the movies listed, the only one that seemed promising and not too loud, were Sakhi, a Mani Ratnam film and Kalisundam Raa. My friends had seen Sakhi, so we landed up choosing KR.

In Vizag, auto-rickshaws do not go by the meter. You have to bargain before getting in and C was able to get a Rs. 20 tag down to Rs. 17. We reached the theatre in central Vizag ten minutes before showtime and just as in Jaipur, (see the Hum Saath Saath Hai review), found a separate queue for women; this made getting tickets a scream. In any case, the tickets, costing Rs. 25 for the balcony/dress-circle, were cheap by Mumbai standards.

If you think I am mad, trying to review a film in Telugu, a language that I have no clue about, stop!

The title, "Kalisundam Raa...", means "Together Forever". Not knowing Telugu didn't make any difference. True, C and I could not understand the dialogues, but the body language and story line were so predictable, that it did not matter. I've done this before anyway; Indian in Chennai, Roja in Matunga and believe me, most standard song-and-dance films are the same, the language be dammed.

The film is a cross between Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (DDLJ), with the last platform/station scene lifted straight out of the that movie, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and a host of the recent "Dil" and "Pyaar" movies. Big families, disputes, unrequited love, Switzerland, misunderstandings, a lost letter that someone finds and eventual redemption. Though it is a hit, it is unlikely to be remade as a Hindi film, simply because it is nothing but a combination of all the "big family" films in recent times. There were two things that didn't make sense though. The first was the fact that at least three couples were first cousins; this apparently is an acceptable practice in Andhra Pradesh, but to me seems totally unacceptable from a genetic point of view. The second was during the titles, where Venkatesh was shown carrying a sten gun, with a bomb explosion behind him; this scene does not subsequently appear anywhere in the film.

The film stars Victory Venkatesh (as they label him) and Simran. Simran is a Punjabi, a current rage in the South and her voice is dubbed. She follows in the footsteps of Nagma and Khushboo, who have both made it very big in the South and she was first seen in Tere Mere Sapne, the ABCL production that showcased Chandrachur Singh, Arshad Warsi and Priya Gill. Venkatesh of course, is a big star and D Rama Naidu's son. He too has done a few films in Bollywood, but none of them have really hit it big.

The film is apparently a big hit, as most films in this genre are. A few irritating aspects were the "loudness" of the dialogues and the unnecessary tendency to lapse into ludicrous comedy (a la Kader Khan, Shakti Kapoor). Did I like it? No! I am sick and tired of watching these nice, big families, the plastic smiles on everyone's faces, the fake warmth and the contrived disputes. But most people are anyway not like me.

Was it worth the effort? On the plus side, the experience of watching a local Telugu film in a local theatre was interesting, C was good company and the softie ice-cream for Rs. 5 during the interval was better than the film. On the minus side, my wife was extremely upset when she came to know during the interval (she called on my cell), that I was seeing a film without her, while she was back home nursing the twins.

So, net, net... probably not!