Deverekonda In Taxiwaala Is Huge Fun

Taxiwaala(Telugu)

Starring: Vijay Deverakonda, Priyanka Jawalkar,Malavika Nair,

Directed by:  Rahul Sankrityan

Rating: *** ½ (3 and a  half stars)

In his 7-year career  Vijay Deverakonda has  climbed from strength to strength, to claim his place among the foremost contemporary star-actors of Telugu cinema. One can see a concerted effort in his oeuvre to play diverse  characters and  to avoid those trademark mannerism that  his peers  have patented for longevity.

 There is durability in fluidity. Vijay proves it once again with his new release. Taxiwaala is  a  breezy blizzard  of easy  scares and languorous  laughter. This mix was  recently a hit in the Hindi  film Stree. It is  attempted successfully again, bringing to the fused genre a kind  of  buoyant eeriness that makes  ghosts and spririts  non-threatening but not glib or  over-casual.You  may not be frightened  by the spirit of the  proceedings. But the  scares are  never scarce.

The  pace is maintained  all through.

Taxiwaala is  all  about Deverekonda’s love for   his taxi. The two are as  romantically involved as Jimi Hendrix and his guitar.  There are scenes of spiked hilarity where the actor speaks  directly to his car, as though  it were a particularly  bothersome girlfriend whom he acquired without checking her adhaar card.

 I  specially  liked Deverekonda’s drunken monologue where he gets all mushy over the  possessed car(Stephen King would  approve  of this mongrelized  avatar of his machine-manoeuvred  thrills) . The plot is  a landmine of  ersatz  spooks and  unspecified eeriness. Admittedly,the post-intermission half is less spirited  than the  the  initial portions. But there are some devilish twists and turns all through . These ensure the audiences’ inclusion .

With its utter disregard  for anything  dark and  anything beyond  blithe entertainment Taxiwaala is Deverekonda’s  lightest brightest  breeziest work to date. The actor has  himself a  blast specially since some of  the  supporting characters are well-etched. For example the motor-garage help named Hollywood with his western swag , is a  hoot.

There is a lengthy chase for a corpse in  a morgue that overstays  its welcome. Also, a lengthy flashback where Deverekondadisappears  for a  good 20 minutes,is bound to make his fans restless. But  the film preserves a look and feel of massypersuasiveness even when the goings-on get a little too wonky to be accommodated in our range of suspended disbelief.

A serious  problem faced  by Deverekonda is a heroine crisis. Not one of his  releases so far has given him a well-matched co-star. The female romantic lead in Taxiwaala is as dispensable as a speebreaker in Formula 1 racing

This is actually the story of a  romance between  a man and his  car which after acquisition  proves to be not quite what he  thought  it to be. This film holds no surprises. And that’s because it  wants us to go with  its  foretold flow. There is  much to recommend in a film where a car comes to freakish life to finish off a doctor guilty of professional misconduct.

Nemesis  is  just a joyride in this feel-good horror-comedy where Stephen King meets David Dhawan , and they both head to see Stree.