Darling Movie Review

PrabhasDieHardFan  Rating: 3.75/5
Punchline: patchy entertainment
Genre: Romance/Family Drama
Type: Straight
Banner: Sri Venkateswara Cine Chitra

Cast: Prabhas, Kajal Agarwal, Shraddha Das, Prabhu, Ahuti Prasad, Kota, Srinivasa Reddy, Raja Sridhar, MS Narayana, Mukesh Rushi, Chandra Mohan, Sivannarayana, Tulasi etc.

Music: GV Prakash
Cinematography: Andrews
Dialogues: Swamy
Editing: Kotagiri Venkateswara Rao
Story - screenplay - direction: Karunakaran
Producer: Bhogavally Prasad
Release date: 23 April 2010
Theater watched: First Day First Show



Story

Prabhas (Prabhas) has a childhood sweetheart named Nandini (Kajal Agarwal) and they are separated during their childhood. Nandini migrates to Swiss along with her father. Meanwhile Prabhas rejects love proposals from other girls as his heart belongs to Nandini. Prabhas gets a chance to meet Nandini for the first time after the separation during the reunion of their respective parents who have studied together. The rest of the story is all about how Prabhas wins the love of Nandini.

Artists Performance

Prabhas: Prabhas is growing as an entertaining actor with each new movie. His comedy timing is impressive in this movie. His costumes and styling deserves a mention. Since there is no strength in the story line of the movie, the director had to put lot of burden on Prabhas, who delivers with elegance and flair.

Others: Kajal Agarwal’s characterization in the first half of the movie is quite dumb and is passive in the second half. Shradda Das, who plays the character of a girl chasing the hero relentlessly, does a good job. Mukesh Rushi’s work is more like a special appearance as a villain. Prabhu is adequate as hero’s father. Ahuti Prasad doesn’t look natural in his role. MS Narayana, Sivannarayana and Srinivasa Reddy are ok. The kid who played the role of heroine’s kid brother is pretty good.

Technical departments

Story - screenplay - direction: Story of the movie is clichéd one. The difference between the director’s earlier movies and this one is the screenplay twist is given during the interval. Directing a screenplay based movie like this one is a tricky task. The entire Swiss episode holds the key to this screenplay. The actual story takes place only in the second half. Hence it becomes extremely important to make sure that the Swiss episode is well written. Unfortunately, the Swiss episode is dull resulting in the entire first half appear disengaged. Since the entire story takes place in the second half, the latter part appears more interesting than the first half. The concept of second half where the hero has to impress the heroine and her father despite of having another guy vying for his girl is a time-tested one as we had seen such situations in countless movies. Karunakaran, who is known for poetic thoughts, sensible humor and nice montages, leaves his strengths aside to make a movie that revolves around the characterization of hero. Hence the entire movie turned out to be a series of comedy episodes written around the hero.

Other departments: Dialogues written by Swamy are good in parts. Music by GV Prakash is average. The background score should have been better. Cinematography by Andrew is very good. He explored Swiss locales well. Action episodes by Peter Heins (mostly inspired by Korean Movies) are good though look forced in the movie. Editing is adequate. Visual effects in songs (3rd song and the snow effect in Hyderabad) are commendable.

Analysis: First half of the film is interesting. Second half gets better. The movie is good towards the last half-an-hour. Karunakaran didn’t stick to his strengths and tried to make an entertainment oriented film with a hero-centric approach. The plus points of the movie are Prabhas and a few comedy episodes in the second half. On the flip side, the Swiss episode and lack of regard for story mars the movie. We go to Karunakaran movies to watch his kind of work, not the kind of work the routine commercial directors dish out! We have to wait and see how Darling fares at box office this summer.

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Samantha opp Prabhas under Dil Raju’s prod

Ye Maya Chesave’ fame Samantha is currently on cloud nine with the success of her debut film. She is already doing the film Brindavanam’ in NTR-Dil Raju combination and has signed a film opposite Mahesh Babu under Sreenu Vaitla’s direction. Now the latest buzz is that Samantha has been chosen to cast opposite Prabhas under Dil Raju’s production. This film will be directed by Santhosham’ fame Dasarath. The film is likely to hit the floors as soon as Prabhas’s latest ‘Darling’ hits the theaters. ‘Darling in Prabhas and Kajal Agarwal combination is releasing on April 23rd. Karunakaran is the director and BVSN Prasad is the producer.

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Darling audio released

The audio of Darling, starring Prabhas in the direction of Karunakaran, was released at the Cyber Gardens, Hyderabad.

The film is made on Sri Venkateswara Cine Creations banner with BVN Prasad producing it and GV Prakash scoring music.

BVN Prasad, Karunakarn, Puri Jagannath, Rajamoui, VV Vinayak, Meher Ramesh, Boyapati Seenu, Dil Raju, Nallamalupu Bujji, Shyam Prasad Reddy, Aditya Babu, GV Prakash, Kajal, Prabhas, Ravi Teja, Allu Arjun, Sravanti Ravi Kishore, Krishnam Raju and others took part in the event.

The audio release function coincided with the birthday celebrations of Allu Arjun and lyricist Anant Sriram. The unit members of Darling had cut the birthday cakes, followed by cool moments.

All the directors who were present had jointly released the audio and presented the albums to the heroes present.

Allu Arjun said: “Most of the people in the film industry call Prabhas as darling. He is my darling, which other he would never have accepted to cut the birthday cake to celebrate my birthday on the occasion of the audio release of his film. I wholeheartedly wish that the audio and the film would bring him great luck.”

VV Vinayak said: “All friends of Prabhas call him darling. I wish the entire team of Darling all the best.”

Ravi Teja said: “I am no doubt to say that the film will turn into a blockbuster.”

Puri Jagannath said: “I want to make a romantic love story with Prabhas. I hope Karunakaran must have done his best in this film. After watching my film Pokiri, Karunkaran said that he liked only one scene in the entire film. It shows that he is a man of high perfection.” Rajamouli said: “Karunakaran is known for his successful treatment of love stories. I liked the trailers so much. As I see the episode, in which Prabhas races ahead wielding a sword, I feel like making a mass action flick with him.”

Meher Ramesh said: “Before making the movie Billa, I narrated a story to Prabhas. But, he did not like it. So I resorted to Billa. I wish all the best to Darling team.”

Karunakaran said: “I am thankful to the Telugu audiences for giving big support to all my films from Toliprema with Pawan Kalyan. I expect the same patronage to this Darling also.”

Prabhas said: “I believe that Karunakaran must have projected me as a very handsome with a new body language.”

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Allu Arjun celebrates 27th birthday with Darling team

Allu Arjun celebrated his 27th birthday at Shilpakala Vedika in Hyderabad. The Telugu actor attended the audio release function of the film Darling. The occasion also saw Allu celebrating his birthday by cutting a huge cake amidst cheers from his fans.

Buzz up!
The function was attend by his close buddies Kajal Aggarwal, Prabhas, Ravi Teja, directors like Puri Jagan, VV Vinayak, SS Rajamouli producers like Dil Raju, Shyam Prasad Reddy and other noted names of film industry.


Allu Arjun's recent release Varudu may have not got good reviews but the box office collection has made him to smile. Currently his is busy with VV Vinayak directional Badrinath which is produced by his father Allu Arjun.

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