The Best Of NTR Jr, Subhash K Jha Picks Junior’s 5 Choicest

1.     Student No 1(2001):  Once upon  a time  S S Rajamouli  was known for more than Baahubali. In fact he  made his directorial debut with this  campus  action film . NTR Jr’s breakthrough as  a leading man,  Student No  1 featured him  as a convicted criminal who is given permission to attend  college. Now  don’t ask, Yeh kaha hota hai.?  NTR Jr  is one of those Telugu  superstars who can  get away with murder. That’s what he  does  in this  entertaining far-fetched flick . The film was a blockbuster and set  both Rajamouli  and  NTR Jr on on their path to superstardom.

2.     Simhadri(2003):  An out-and-out  NTR Jr vehicle, this one is again directed  by S  S Rajamouli  and shows  the  director’s roots  in the  traditional  South Indian family drama. NTR plays  an orphan who would go to any lengths for his adopted  family, bailing them out of impending bankruptcy  and disrepute with  the celerity of a sharpshooter determined  to win gold at Olympics in  archery and  gun shooting. The twists and turns in the  plot are mindboggling. NTR fans  saw the film repeatedly to  ingest the  convoluted plot.

3.     Yamadonga(2007): The third  collaboration  of  NTR Jr and Rajamouli was  the  most absurd and (hence?)  the most  successful  of  the trio. NTR Jr  plays  an orphan in love with a wealthy girl(Priyamani, Manoj Bajpai’s wife  in The Family Man). Her greedy relatives capture all her wealth and treat  her  like  a househelp until NTR rescues her. He  then dies and goes to Heaven(where else can  the celluloid God go?) . In Heaven NTR has long dialogues with Yama Raj, played by  Mohan Babu. The  other film where I saw the hero  conversing with Yama Raj was Lok Parlok where  Premnath  played the  God of death.

4.     Baadshah(2013): Moving  away from his  lucrative collaboration with Rajamouli, NTR Jr delivered a  roaring hit with this pee brained  potboiler  about  a gangster  on  the run. The film’s USP was  its various foreign  locations and  elements  of glamour  so far missing from NTR’s   crowd-pulling grammar. NTR Jr featured  in a  double  role  in  this slick flik. One  of  the  characters was named   N. T Rama Rao after his legendary father. Srinu Vaitla directed the  film which was  originally titled Mafia  then  Action.Both titles  were rejected as  too dark and aggressive for  NTR Jr fans.

5.     Jai Lava Kusa(2017):  The  biggest  of  Bollywood superstars  have failed in triple  roles:  Dilip  Kumar in Bairaag, Amitabh Bachchan in Mahaan, and much lower down  the scale  Saif  Ali Khan in  the execrable Humshakals. Telugu cinema  has its own more-the-merrier fan ideology   for superstars. NTR Jr was  a roaring hit  in three roles in this K S Ravindra masala dosa where the  superstar played the three title roles leaving  not even breathing space for  other actors. But who cared! As  long as  Junior  kept the  proceedings perked  up, three times over.