Kick 2 Review: Half baked sequel
With Kick too becoming a classic and all time favorite for the Telugu junta, all eyes are on its sequel Kick 2. Moreover Surender Reddy is riding high on the success of Race Gurram. The trailers gave a sneak peek of the budget involved in this project. Vakkantham Vamsi comes up with a new characterization and this time it’s comfort, or in other words, selfishness. Oh wait! Ravi Teja doesn’t agree that equivalence in the movie. So I rather explain his definition of comfort in the story section.
The movie begins with a quick recap of the original and now Kalyan (Ravi teja) is in U.S of A. He is blessed with a baby boy, who comes out earlier by two months, as he is uncomfortable in the womb. He is Robin Hood (Ravi Teja), the protagonist of Kick-2 who loves to be in the comfort mode at any time of day and any point of life. For the same reason he chooses to study medicine because he can treat himself comfortably whenever there is a need. This Telugu Robinhood also has muscle power but he is selfish and self-obsessed. Vakkantham has written the character very detailed illustrating it with some hilarious situations. The first half is abundant of such moments, and some other scenes sprinkled about the setup we should be ready for in second half. The second half moves to Vilaspur in Bihar where Thakur Solomon Singh (Ravi Kishen) has oppressed the people there. He has a problem of running rose as much as Mahesh Babu in Pokiri. To protect his mining business and not to get revolted by the villagers, he also separates young boys from the families and creates an own army under him. The story is about how Robinhood lands in Vilaspur and ends up rescuing the Vilaspur vaasis.
The movie starts off on an extremely promising note. Vakkantham creates the character Robinhood of Kick2 as interestingly complex as Kalyan of Kick. The behavioral pattern of Robin makes us curious to watch him more and more. This builds up so much that, in the second half one would expect interesting proceedings. However they don’t come. ‘Ok may be at least we would have something in the last half an hour’ is the last hope. The film is consistently bland in the entire half with a lackluster climax. The graph in the beginning reaches a great height, maintains it till the interval and drops down and lies there forever.
Ravi Teja’s screen presence is mesmerizing, and he does it like he is born for the Kick franchise. However, it’s that Vilaspur premise that has dumped the movie. Though they have pulled in actors like Sanjay Mishra and Rajpal Yadav to get that Bihari flavor, it really didn’t have an impact. The comic situations created using Ashish Vidhyarthi, Posani and Kovai Sarala are pathetic. The humor they tried to evoke using the ensemble in the village is hardly effective. With many such drawbacks, the movie appealed only in parts. The melodrama worked only in a couple of key scenes.
Thaman’s tracks, background score and camera work are noteworthy. The movie had a great scale but just failed to create the impact for the potential it had. Probably the director and the writer have to take equal share in failing a very capable story.
The sequel is far away from creating the magic of Kick. As a standalone film, Kick-2 entertains in the first half and trembles in the second half.
