Rangabali Review: Director Pawan Basamsetti’s debut film Rangabali is neither here nor there. The film doesn’t satiate you as a masala potboiler nor does it move you as the story of a young man looking to bring about change, even if for selfish reasons. What it offers instead is a lukewarm film that might be funny at times but leaves you wanting more.
Shaurya (Naga Shaurya) is a youngster from Rajavaram who loves the kind of attention he receives in his little town. In fact, he loves showing off so much, he’s even referred to as Show in his town, despite his mom lovingly calling him Nani. He has a peculiar habit though. Every time he passes the Rangabali Centre, he keeps losing his balance for no reason. While Pawan tries very hard to link this to a larger tale, the fact that he won’t fight without wearing a white shirt just ends up being a nonsensical quirk.
Cue a series of events where his disappointed father (Goparaju Ramana) packs him off to Visakhapatnam in hopes that he’ll come back a changed man and take over the pharmacy he runs. While there, he falls for a medico called Sahaja (Yukti Thareja). Her father (Murli Sharma) is okay with their union, but he seems to share a painful past with Rajavaram that he can’t get over. And now, Show, promises to come back when things are different. But it might not be as easy as it seems.
Rangabali also sees Shine Tom Chacko as MLA Parasuram and Rajkumar Kasireddy and Satya as his childhood friends, apart from Noel Sean as a random foe who’s never spoken of again. Out of all these people, it’s only Satya who gets a chance to shine – and that’s only due to his comic timing, not the writing. Scenes happen, characters come and go, lyricist Ananta Sriram plays Parasuram’s secretary for some reason, it’s truly as chaotic as it seems. And at the end of it all, there’s only one core story that seems to matter but both Pawan and Show manage to make even that about them.
The film brushes over some serious themes with humour, or worse, turns them into mass moments. People need to evolve beyond gossip mongering and spreading salacious rumours seems to be the message to drive home, but the road to that is sure rocky. Rangabali would’ve worked had it spent more time on the kind of violence the town is built over, instead of just brushing by it in a dreary flashback involving the ever-dependable Sarathkumar, and less over unnecessary special numbers, duets, cliché slow motion shots and fight scenes that come out of nowhere.
Naga Shaurya seems sincere in the way he plays Show, but more than his performance, what registers is the way he looks. Rajkumar, Murli and Subhalekha Sudhakar are stuck in roles that don’t require much of them, with Yukti coming across as amateurish. This film would’ve been a complete dud if not for Satya and while Sapthagiri and Brahmaji are hilarious too, they feel wasted. The writing and direction by Pawan, editing by Karthika Srinivas, music by Pawan CH leave much to be desired. Divakar and Vamsi’s cinematography works well.
At the end of it all, it feels like a crime that Rangabali had the potential to be better, but it just isn’t. It just lacks the ‘show’manship required of it.
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