A star is a star because he has the capacity to give consistent box office hits. Well, for that to happen, he has to have all the right ingredients that the audiences expect from their hero like a bit of comedy, a bit of emotions, loads of action and of course romance and songs.
The percentage can vary from movie to movie, but if all the ingredients are in place, the star is bound to have a sure-shot hit. But Mahesh Babu is one superstar who the directors love to play with. Right from the time he was in his teens, he has been on experiments spree.
When he was barely in his teens, he acted in Needa, which was a different film. Of course, the film had his elder brother Ramesh playing the lead, but that’s when the story began. Later, immediately after he debuted as a hero, YVS Choudhary made Yuvaraju which had two heroines opposite Mahesh and he has a son outside marriage in the movie.
Now, at the time, Mahesh was barely in his early 20s and the audiences did not like such a heavy subject from a young hero. Later, Jayant Paranje tried to restore the glory of his father Krishna and made Cowboy a Westerner-style movie. This too was a huge box-office dud despite two Bollywood heroines prancing around.
Around that time, Teja made Nijam another serious subject and Sobhan made a film which had a tragic ending. Meanwhile, Tamil director SJ Surya made a film in which Mahesh’s character behaves one way during day time and completely differently during night.
The experiments continued with Gunasekhar’s Sainikudu and Surender Reddy’s Atidhi. On the other hand, Trivikram who made Jalsa and Julayi with mega heroes decided to make a ‘devudu’ out of Mahesh in Khaleja. Sukumar’s experiment with Mahesh as psychological thriller One was a dud at the box office. Srinu Vaitla showed he could experiment with Aagadu.
If one were to look at Mahesh’s film list, looks like Puri was the only director who stuck to box office norms and gave him two hits in Pokiri and Businessman. Otherwise, nearly 90 per cent of his directors conveniently chose to use Mahesh’s charisma and star image to experiment with plots that they could not take to other heroes.
Recent Random Post:
