Basthi Review

Behind the Movie Basthi: Following the current trend of introducing off springs as future stars of industry, Jayasudha’s son Shreyan is debuting as hero with this flick while heroine Pragathi is also the new face. Let us see how refreshingly director Vasu Manthena dealt these fresh faces?      

In the Movie Basthi: Movie kicks of introducing the ancestral rivalry between two groups in a Basthi with voice-over of Sai Kumar. The tug of war is continued in this generation by headmen Bhavani (Abhimanyu Singh) and Naidu (Mukesh Rishi). Meanwhile, Bhavani’s sister Sravanthi (Pragathi) gets kidnapped by Naidu’s men as a part of their conflict. Here lands Naidu’s brother Vijay (Shreyan) in Hyderabad and develops friendship with Sravanthi kept hidden in Naidu’s house. Very soon this friendship develops into love and here arises the actual problem. While Naidu agrees for a peaceful pact with this marriage, Bhavani fingers in between and his egoistic attitude creates new problems. Finally, what happened to Vijay and Sravanthi is rest.

Values of the Movie Basthi: For debutant hero, anything in overdose might lead to establishment of a wrong image. Vasu Manthena picked a simple and straight subject dominated by the backdrop of rivalry between two groups weaved with romance and drama. However, the way script runs on dry patch with very few intriguing elements made the film a mediocre show. Writing department also did a poor job. Direction wise, Vasu Manthena’s inexperience and inconsistency in handling the crucial episodes clearly felt. In second half, he was completely disoriented. Gunasekhar’s camera work was decent in couple of songs while editing by Goutham Raju is just bizarre. Music by Praveen Immadi sounded something new in couple of songs, especially the item song of Reshhi Goutham and Sufi flavored first night song. Production values of Vazman Production are modest.

Onto the performances, Shreyan is limited to only couple of expressions. He is leanly handsome and needs to add up pounds of flesh immediately to fit in for any characterization. Despite a tall stature, he never looked uncomfortable in romantic episodes. However, he needs to get rid of stiffness in facial emotions for his second film. Fresh heroine Pragathi looked like a pure Telugu girl. She oozed a bit of oomph in couple of songs. Her chemistry with Shreyan is fairly adequate. Presence of Kota as father to Pragathi well balanced the first half. Mukesh Rishi too showed his strong screen appearance. Abhimanyu Singh is as usual so cruel. Among the rest, comedy of Sathya, Sapthagiri tried to tickle the fun bone. Ali’s comedy as Lord Brahma is atrocious.

Out of the Movie Basthi: The only favorable outcome from this film is just OK debut platform for Shreyan and Pragathi. As a director, Vasu Manthena slipped down many a times. He got a clean and neat take off with strong feud backdrop established perfectly. When Shreyan and Pragathi remained just show dolls in first half, senior artists Kota and Mukesh Rishi supplemented the real substance to run time by closing the first half on satisfactory note. Erasing these two key characters from story, Vasu Manthena did a big mistake in second half by showing over dependence on young leads clearly struggled to take the total burden. Abhimanyu Singh’s confusing characterization is further wreckage. 

‘Basthi’ would have been a decent film, if second half had anything to engage us. The treatment and narration was humdrum. Vasu Manthena baffled to fill the second half run time by joining senseless comic quotient in the form of Ali or Sathya’s awkward romantic sub track unnecessarily deviating the  core point. Climax comes all in a hurry with no prelude and hero ends up giving uninspiring lecture on Power of Love. 

Finally, this ‘Basthi’ may not be traceable in its second week when ‘Bahubali’ is to invade all over. Commercially, this could be just one week film befitting to the meager budget exactly spent.   

Cinejosh Verdict of Basthi: Just Ok Debut for Shreyan.

                                                  Cinejosh Rating: 2.5/5.0

                                                             Reviewed by Srivaas