Chiranjeevi Beats His Star Son’s Records, Father & Son To Star Together

Telugu legend Chiranjeevi’s new film Khaidi No. 150 , his first on ten years, is a huge success shattering boxoffice records.

In comparison Chiranjeevi’s son Ramcharan Teja’s latest film Dhruva released  as few weeks earlier has proven to be  a tame moneyspinner,thereby proving the irrefutable staying-power of star fathers from AmitabhBachchan and Dharmendra in Bollywood  to Kamal Haasan and Chiranjeevi in the South who are doing far better in their acting careers than their progenies.

Sources in the know from the Telugu film industry say the father and son Chiranjeevi and Ramcharan now plan to share screenspace in a two-hero film.

“Ramcharan’s career needs some fresh  blood, That his father has shattered records after a 10-year gap  is an eye-opener to Ramcharan. When Ramcharan appears in the film for a song with his father the theatres roar in approval. It’s time the two generations of Chiranjeevi’s family came together, and a project is being planned with the two of them as father and son,” says an insider.

Qualitatively Ramcharan’s Dhruva is  a superior film. In Dhruva we could see the young actor attempting to change the way we look at Telugu cinema. Thw grammar of the action scenes was different and the presentation and packaging were far slicker.Rancharan had worked hard on his body language , the lack of acting chops compensated for by the attention paid to building athletic muscles.

Except for the hair dye, Chiranjeevi  doesn’t even try.

Khaidi No 150 is an unabashed celebration of the status quo. Whatever Chiranjeevi’s fans have come to expect from their iconic star he delivers, in ample measures. There is the action,dancing and romancing all done in the trademark Chiranjeevi style. There are two roles for the star to perform. He plays them with a gusto akin to twins occupying a kabbaddi match from two sides of the line.He brings no distinction between the two characters who are as interchangeable as  two wheels of an automobile.

It is evident that Chiranjeevi has aged  biologically. His cinema,though remains stuck at what he used to do when he was 24 or 35 or 48. In that sense Chiranjeevi’s cinema is ageless, though the tell-tale signs of jadedness are scattered everywhere in this long rambling at times incoherent but uniformly adulatory film about a do-gooder who could have been a politician  if his fans wanted him that way.But Chiranjeevi fans are an apolitical lot.

There is a disarming pliability about Chiranjeevi’s personality in Khaidi No 150. He seems to be telling his fans that he would do anything to please them, as long as they don’t demand any unreasonably excessive levels of aesthetic gratification from his cinema. Khaidi No 150 with its garish  visuals and an exaggerated emotional palate that has its origins in our naat–shastra culture, bombards our senses with  furious volumes of noise violence and melodrama. This could be  a film from the 1980s masquerading as a anew-age entertainer and getting away with the fraudulence because….well, Chiranjeevi can get away with anything, including the girl Kajal Aggarwal who re-defines the Damsel In Distress.

Everything is theatrical about the presentation.  Nothing is what it seems. Not even  Chiranjeevi who is actually a 60-year old man pretending to be as agile and rakish as 30-year old. To his credit Chiranjeevi pulls this charade off much more convincingly than his Southern peer Rajnikanth. But not convincing enough to make us believe that the ten years he was away from camera have magically been erased from Chiranvjeevi’s birth certificate.