Movie Name	Oh Baby
Cast	Samantha Akkineni, Naga Sourya, Rajendra Prasad, Lakshmi
Director	Nandini Reddy
Music Director	Mickey J Meyer

Remaking a movie from another language is a common trend in every film industry even in this era of OTT ruling the roost. Producers are in a hunt of such movies which have universal appeal or emotional content, literally. Oopiri which stars Nagarjuna is a remake of “The Intouchables” a French movie and recently released “Bharat” starring Salman Khan is also a remake of a Korean movie “An Ode to My Father”. The audience has every facility to watch the movie simply on the OTT platform but the producers might be aiming to reach that audience who don’t have that OTT facility. Samantha Akkineni and director Nandini Reddy came together for a film for Suresh Productions named ” Oh Baby” which is a remake of Korean film “Miss Granny”. This movie is releasing into theatres today. Let’s see how it works on us.

 

Stoy

Baby (Lakshmi) is an old lady who has all the so-called bad qualities of being old. She runs a college canteen along with Chanti (Rajendra Prasad). As an old lady, her way of caring is different and her daughter in law is affected very much mentally and health wise due to the naggings of Baby. She gets admitted into a hospital due to a mild heart stroke. The doctor advises the family to join Baby in an old age home for the betterment of her daughter in law which hurts the baby as her granddaughter yells at her telling this. She goes from there to her canteen and she gets a call from her grandson inviting her to his musical performance and it changes the life of Baby. How her life changes?

Cast and performance

Lakshmi has done a great job in the role of Baby. Her character is the crux for the movie to workout and she bettered her role. Samantha Akkineni has done a terrific job in her role. She is fantastic in every aspect and dubbing of Chinmayi to her role helped. Rajendra Prasad is superb. Rao Ramesh once again proved himself in the emotional sequence. Naga Shaurya is nice. Teja, Pragathi, Snigdha, RJ Hemanth are good. All other actors have done a good job in their roles.

Writing Department

The story of Oh Baby is different conceptually and the screenplay is good. The dialogues of the film are written well.

Technical departments

The songs composed by Mickey J Meyer are nice. He put in a great effort in composing background score. Richard Prasad has done fine work in terms of cinematography. The editing of the film could have been better. The production values are grand.

Highlights

-> Samantha Akkineni
-> Comedy sequences
-> Concept of the film

Minus

-> Too much of emotional scenes
-> Routine approach to a unique concept

Verdict

Oh Baby is a story that tells the life of older people in the family and their innate feelings. The film has a really unique concept which stands out from the rest of Telugu films. With such a concept in hand, director Nandini Reddy and writer Lakshmi Bhupala approached it in a very routine way like every other Telugu film with loud emotions and summarised dialogues. Even the revelation of new things is done so routine. This is a disappointing aspect of the film. The positives include Samantha Akkineni and her character which generates good humor with the body language and dialect. The emotional scenes are good but gone overboard may be to entice the family audience. The second half seemed a bit longer, maybe because of the conclusions. The film is not what the trailers or promos have promised and to summarise, Oh, baby is a film aimed for the family audience with a fantastic performance of Samantha Akkineni with a few surprises.

A conscientious ghost decides to contest elections opposite a criminal candidate and seeks mandate from the gullible public while emphasising on how a worthy candidate shouldn’t be judged by the nature of his existence but by his scruples and merit.

Its main attraction then and now — Amitabh Bachchan reprises his role with humour, wisdom, charisma and a charming approachability. He seems to exclusively radiate around his knee-length co-stars.

In reciprocation, young Parth Bhalerao’s scene-stealing Akhrot matches Big B’s seasoned heft in good measure.

Playing the precocious Dharavi-dwelling kid who begins every sentence with ‘apun’ and empathises with his single working mom’s (Usha Jadhav’s) struggle is known to produce painfully maudlin moments on celluloid but Bhalerao’s judicious energy, instinctive smarts and melting smile steer clear of tired stereotypes.

A fun bond strikes between him and Bhoothnath immediately after the latter returns to earth to wipe out his ‘can’t scare kids’ reputation in Bhoothland, which looks straight out of a European fairy tale on the outside but a typical government headquarters with a couple of witty touches inside –- signboard requesting to maintain ‘dead’ silence.

Superstars Shah Rukh Khan and Ranbir Kapoor have cameos in the film which bring life to it for a while. However,the drab and boring premise seems to be inevitable . So Boredom,thereby,continues post the exit of the superstars.

Bhoothnath Returns is a film which is full of loopholes, yet the brilliant performances by Amitabh Bachchan, Boman Irani and child artist Parth Bhalerao makes it a watchable film.

Basic idea of Bhoothnath seems to have lost somewhere in the second part. Except for the first 45 minutes, Bhoothnath Returns is a serious film which has a very serious political theme.

While the theme is well-timed, and coincides with the Indian elections, the lack of a tighter edit and logic reduces it to a ghastly mess.

The film challenges the mediocrity in the first half but doesn’t sustain till the end. The movie starts as a fun ride with both Big B and the child actor but after a point becomes preachy lectures on social issues albeit a few rib-tickling and moist-eyed moments.

At 160-minutes of screen time, it stops being a fun, endearing story and turns into a classroom lecture on voting rights.

If Nitesh had blanked out Bhoothnath, and retained his baritone voice instead, at least for majority of the movie, it would’ve been more effective.

So, what could have been a good movie, turned into something hugely disappointing!

In a movie, if the viewer knows what’s going to happen, but is exhilarated by how it is happening, then it’s undoubtedly a story well-told. Uyyala Jampala falls into this special group of films, where an extra- ordinary story-telling makes even a simplest story look and feel like a special one.

Suri and Uma Devi are the ‘bava-mardall’u and neighbors too. Right from their childhood and the salad days, they play pranks on each other, pull each other’s legs, and end up in frivolous quarrels. When they reach adulthood, Suri runs his own small business and Uma Devi pursues B.com. In an attempt to show- off their egos, they end up hooking up with the wrong partners. How they realize that they are made for each other is the rest of the story.

Well the story sounds familiar making you recall two films with a similar characters and story-line – ‘Nuvve Kavali’ and ‘Aanandam’. However, it’s the treatment and the setting that makes Uyyala Jampala fresh. All the events take place in the tiny town of Konavaram, with people talking in a very native accent. The location and the language are the soul of the film, which embrace you right in the beginning.

For the rest of the movie, you become a townie of Konavaram watching the funny and cute proceedings happen.

Raj Tarun has an extremely effortless dialogue delivery, but that ease doesn’t show up in his expressions. Avika Gor was adorable portraying the gullible and innocent Uma Devi. She was expressive in an endearing style. Many a times, her dialogues and lip-sync asynchronous though. The supporting cast does a perfect job. Be it Anita Chowdary as the soft-spoken mother of Suri, or Ravi Varma as the shrewd father of Uma, or Kireeti Damaraju as the prospective bridegroom.

Cinematography and editing are neat. The dialogues are no nonsense. They carry a very natural flavor, without having any unnecessary ‘punch-dialogues’.

The only trivial drawback is its penultimate 20 minutes, which is too predictable and delves into an emotional zone for long time. The good news is that ends in a light-hearted manner, bringing back the grin you were carrying from the start of the movie.

Watching Uyyala Jampala is equivalent to smelling the fragrance of rain falling on dry earth. A wonderful feeling!

Strongly Recommended!

Raj and DK, known for their hatke and interesting movies like Shor in the City and Go Goa Gone have tried their hands in producing a Telugu flick. ‘D for Dopidi’ directed by debutant Siraj Kalla, and co-produced by Nani, is a comedy based on bank robbery.

Vicky, Raju, Harish and Bannu are four friends, who hit situations where they are in a dire need of money. Vicky is bankrupt after spending lakhs to woo his girlfriends with expensive gifts. Raju is a junior artiste but aspires to become a lead actor. Harish can marry his loved one only after he can win a challenge thrown by girl’s father, to prove that he is solvent. Bannu wants to cut down all the extra kilos and get a six-pack. An amateurish bank robbery is planned, and the chaos created by the execution of the robbery is the story.

The best part of D for Dopidi is the duration. The 120 minutes film starts quickly without wasting much time and continues the pace throughout. There are no songs and other deviations from the main plot. The narration rendered by Nani in the beginning is a great kick-start to the movie. But, when the narration stops, the entertainment stopped too. The movie with a been-there-seen-before plot should ride high on humour, but fails to do except for very few scenes. The situational comedy was badly written, evoking only a very limited laughs. D for Dopidi, however has the advantage of making some constant progress throughout the proceedings, that you will delay your loo-break, if any.

Thanikella Bharani’s episode was entertaining, and Dev Katta was good as the cop. Sundeep Kishan was the only good performer of the four. The best part of him is he makes the utmost use of his screen time delivering a quality performance. Varun Sandesh is still stuck to the same old lifeless dialogue delivery and the annoying accent. Harish was Ok and Bannu was ineffective.

D for Dopidi, could have been a hilarious ride, if the writing wasn’t weak. Many scenes in the movie give you “So-I-need-to-laugh-to-this-silly-joke?” moments.

D for Dullsville