N.T.R: Kathanayakudu Movie Review: Balakrishna-Krish give perfect tribute to NTR worth the watch

N.T.R: Kathanayakudu is the most awaiting movie of the year 2019. It has the hype of the bio pic and that too with NTR's devoted son Ballaya Babu doing the role of NTR, producing it on his own banner NBK Films. Many cameos’ by noted celebs have turned many heads. Krish took the driver seat replacing Director Teja, took the responsibility of making this a visual grandeur and an epic on par with Mahanati (Savitri's bio pic last year). Expectations are sky high with the festival season on.

Let's see how the movie fared:

Casting:

Balakrishna was a delight to watch, he was energetic charming as ever. He has played the role of his father perfectly, the body language, the hoarse tone of voice when NTR is angry, his eyes though with glasses needs no dialogue at many instances in the movie. Ballaya did many tributes enacting NTR to the famous NTR movies and songs making the audiences go wild. The godly entrance as Lord Krishna gives goosebumps. This episode itself is worth the ticket. Balakrishna enjoyed and worked very hard on this movie with atmost commitment, his hard work with long monologues and heavy makeup trying to match NTR can be seen.

People who are in the late thirties and forties will go crazy as they can get the movie and song references better.

Vidya Balan played the role of NTR’s wife, she fitted the role aptly but had very little to do. With most screen time all she had to do was to nod to NTR or to give a wide smile. The other casting of directors, friends seemed similar to Mahanati template. Sumanth got all the attention, he had more screen time then all the cameos by others put together. He played the role of Akkinenei Nageswar Rao. He suited him very well. The role of Savitri was played by  Nitya Menon is worth mentioning.

Direction and others:

Krish made this prestigious movie with utmost care, he neatly crafted all the incidents that took place in NTR’s life and without making anything boring, he added the Movie shoots & Song shoots video bytes in between maintaining the tempo and pace of the movie. This is easily his best movie till date post Vedam.

 Everything looks balanced, thanks to Sai Madhav Burra’s dialogue’s, the movie was not loud at any instance unlike most Ballaya Babu movies. It was so soothing to hear pleasant dialogue’s from Ballaya Babu, that too philosophical quotes.

Unlike last Krish-Ballaya Babu movie Gautamiputra Satakarni, this movie had better production values. A rich texture and eye pleasing cinematography makes it a good watch.

Music and BGM by M. M. Keeravani is soul soothing, the music helped in hyping the scenes whenever required.

What went wrong is the length and pace of the movie. The slow narration raced up with Film Shoots/Cameos/Songs did not help much, especially in 2^nd half of the movie. The 2^nd half of the movie was dragged unnecessarily just to have the screen time enough for part 2 of the movie. Chandra Babu Naidu played by Rana got the audience hooting, YSR was also shown like a trainee associate beside Chandra Babu Naidu. Unlike my expectation of making a controversial political end to hype the 2^nd part of the movie, the movie ends with NTR launching his party TELUGU DESAM.

Trade: The movie has already recovered almost its making by selling the rights to Prime Video. The movie was sold at a theatrical of 70Cr. However, the US boxoffice pre-booking looks weak. Also, in HYD and most parts of AP, the movie did not go housefull on its release day being Wednesday. But the hype of the movie vs the movie booking seems disappointing.  We hope the movie does well. As we liked it. Awaiting 2^nd Part N.T.R: Mahanayakudu.

3/5 Worth a watch J

                                         

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