Pawan Kalyan’s Bro..A Charming Take On Life & Debt

Bro(Telugu)

Rating: ***

Films  about afterlife like Jerry Zucker’s Ghost from Hollywood or Jhuk Gaya Aasman  and  Lok Parlok in Hindi, take the satirical  route.And why not? If we can laugh at  death we can conquer the  fear of dying.

The unusual aspect ,or maybe not so unusual, is  Pawan Kalyan being cast a God of time.Pawan is omnipresent  in the narrative although the script  is not really about him. It is about Sai Dharam Tej’s cranky character  Mark  who has  a pretty screwed-up  notion of selfworth, until a car crash lands him on the  doorstep of the God Of Time, Titan , if you  please(tieup with the watch company?).

Titan and Mark team up to  play what could possibly be  a fresh  if not altogether fruitful alliance between  Death and the  Dead…or, almost dead.Life doesn’t give second chances. But Death  does, at  least in this tall  tale which is charming in parts, exasperating in  other parts .

The talented  Tamil actor   Samuthirakani who played God  in the Tamil version of this fim,  directs Bro. Samuthirakani’s storytelling is  a fine blend  of  star adulation and  fantasy narration. Pawan  Kalyan’s  progressively political  screen-image is cleverly  fastened  to a plot that gives him ample opportunity to posture and preen and make slanted political references.He does  it all with a disarming equipoise.

Sai Tej sportingly  plays along. Bro seems to be fun for the two actors.Their upbeat mood seeps down to the audience, giving the  endproduct a  hue  of hectic hilarity  in ways that  are perhaps  not completely  comprehensible  to the actors, many of whom  come and  contributing something  to the  plot, though no one is  sure what.

Pawan Kalyan shares almost every frame  with Sai Tej. His  smug detachment  from the  drama is at times  effective, though not always. The director plays Pawan’s old hit songs to create  a  sense of renewed nostalgia. This musical homage to  Pawan Kalyan’s stardom doesn’t  secrete  the same  nostalgia value as Karan Johar’s Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani where old songs punctuated  the screenplay and carried the story forward.

Pawan Kalyan’s  hit songs  in Bro are just there. Take  ‘em or leave ‘em. He  is most effective when silent:a   state of being that the screenplay doesn’t favour. Sai Tej  , on the other hand, is  very comfortable with  volubility.

These two  make  a decent pair until they  break into some awful leg-shaking  expeditions  which look like out-takes  from  Honey Singh’s  music videos. As for  the  family drama, it is partially effective especially the theme  of  ‘How well Do You Know Your Family?’

Sadly, life is  not an episode  of  KBC .And Pawan Kalyan is  no Amitabh Bachchan.