Film: DarlingCast: Prabhas, Kajal, Shradhdha Das, Prabhu, Kota Srinivas Rao, Chandra Mohan, Mukesh Rishi.
Dialogues: Swami
Music director: GV Prakash Kumar
Cinematography: Andrew
Editing: Kotagiri
Action: Peter Heins
Produced by: BVSN Prasad
Story, screenplay and directed by: Karunakar
Release Date: Apr 23, 2010
Rating:
Prabhas Darling Telugu Movie review:
This time prabhas and karunakaran combination not worked big on the screen.Director Karunakaran is known for presenting feel-good films with wafer-thin storyline. He does the same again with this Darling. Nothing new in the script but the film’s second half evokes some interest among the viewers thanks to some sentiment scenes. Prabhas’s dashing looks, Andrew’s eye catching visuals and second half scenes are the only praiseworthy. The film also lacks entertainment and songs are another big drawback. Don’t expect too much. Pretty ordinary flick, solely relying on star factors. The director has been stuck in Toliprema days (his debut film), so you hardly see any novel thing in presentation except the marvelous CG song of snow drenched Hyderabad ala Switzerland.
Story:
Prabhas (Prabhas) has a childhood sweetheart named Nandini (Kajal Agarwal) and they are separated during their childhood. Nandini migrates to Swiss along with her father. Meanwhile Prabhas rejects love proposals from other girls as his heart belongs to Nandini. Prabhas gets a chance to meet Nandini for the first time after the separation during the reunion of their respective parents who have studied together. The rest of the story is all about how Prabhas wins the love of Nandini.
Artist Performance:
Prabhas is growing as an entertaining actor with each new movie. His comedy timing is impressive in this movie. His costumes and styling deserves a mention. Since there is no strength in the story line of the movie, the director had to put lot of burden on Prabhas, who delivers with elegance and flair.
Kajal Agarwal’s characterization in the first half of the movie is quite dumb and is passive in the second half. Shradda Das, who plays the character of a girl chasing the hero relentlessly, does a good job. Mukesh Rushi’s work is more like a special appearance as a villain. Prabhu is adequate as hero’s father. Ahuti Prasad doesn’t look natural in his role. MS Narayana, Sivannarayana and Srinivasa Reddy are ok. The kid who played the role of heroine’s kid brother is pretty good.
Kajal Agarwal’s characterization in the first half of the movie is quite dumb and is passive in the second half. Shradda Das, who plays the character of a girl chasing the hero relentlessly, does a good job. Mukesh Rushi’s work is more like a special appearance as a villain. Prabhu is adequate as hero’s father. Ahuti Prasad doesn’t look natural in his role. MS Narayana, Sivannarayana and Srinivasa Reddy are ok. The kid who played the role of heroine’s kid brother is pretty good.
Analysis:
First half of the film is not interesting. Second half gets better. The movie is good towards the last half-an-hour. Karunakaran didn’t stick to his strengths and tried to make an entertainment oriented film with a hero-centric approach. The plus points of the movie are Prabhas and a few comedy episodes in the second half. On the flip side, the Swiss episode and lack of regard for story mars the movie. We go to Karunakaran movies to watch his kind of work, not the kind of work the routine commercial directors dish out! We have to wait and see how Darling fares at box office this summer.
Technical Departments:
Story of the movie is clichéd one. The difference between the director’s earlier movies and this one is the screenplay twist is given during the interval. Directing a screenplay based movie like this one is a tricky task. The entire Swiss episode holds the key to this screenplay. The actual story takes place only in the second half. Hence it becomes extremely important to make sure that the Swiss episode is well written. Unfortunately, the Swiss episode is dull resulting in the entire first half appear disengaged. Since the entire story takes place in the second half, the latter part appears more interesting than the first half. The concept of second half where the hero has to impress the heroine and her father despite of having another guy vying for his girl is a time-tested one as we had seen such situations in countless movies. Karunakaran, who is known for poetic thoughts, sensible humor and nice montages, leaves his strengths aside to make a movie that revolves around the characterization of hero. Hence the entire movie turned out to be a series of comedy episodes written around the hero.
Other departments:
Dialogues written by Swamy are good in parts. Music by GV Prakash is average. The background score should have been better. Cinematography by Andrew is very good. He explored Swiss locales well. Action episodes by Peter Heins (mostly inspired by Korean Movies) are good though look forced in the movie. Editing is adequate. Visual effects in songs (3rd song and the snow effect in Hyderabad) are commendable.
Final View:
Darling is plain simple movie with no big twists and turns. Although the film’s central idea of ‘imagined’ character appearing in real life might seem novel but the same idea came in one of Rajashekar’s early movies. On the whole, the film is just time pass flick. Its a good film to watch with your family members .
