Sai Dharam Tej attempted a complete love story after he faced a streak of failures with action films. Karunakaran of old Tholi Prema is the director and Creative Commercials that is known for making feel good films is the production house. Tej I Love You looked like a bankable film from the outset, but it turns out to be a total waste of time with outdated ideas of the director.
Story:
Tej (Sai Dharam Tej) meets Nandini (Anupama) in a train and falls in love with her. Nandini also reciprocates after a while, but she meets with an accident before she confesses her love to him. She loses a part of her recent memory because of the accident and doesn’t remember Tej. Meanwhile, there is a back story that connects them both, but they aren’t aware of it. How does Nandini get to know that she loved Tej before the accident forms rest of the story.
Performances:
Sai Dharam Tej did an okay job as a lover boy. This is definitely not his comfort zone but managed to put up a decent show. He needs to work on his expressions in emotional scenes though. Also he has put on a lot of weight, which is not a good sign for a young actor. Anupama did well in teasing as well as emotional scenes. But her character is not developed properly. Viva Harsha gets a meaty role and he does his usual stuff. There are many actors in supporting roles, but none got a role worth mentioning.
Technicalities:
Karunakaran’s ideas and direction still remains to be stuck in the nineties. Many scenes in Tej are either rewritten or inspired from his previous films. There is a sort of desperation in his approach to make this work, which added to the pressure and affected the overall product. Characters, situations and conflicts all make it pretty clear that Karunakaran hasn’t updated much.
A good soundtrack is a must for a love story and Gopi Sunder fails to score one. Andamaina Chandamama song is the only catchy one in the film. Background score also is uninspiring. There is so much stuff to edit out from the final cut. Cinematography is good with vibrant visuals. Production values are just okay.
Thumbs Up:
Anupama
Few comedy sequences
Thumbs Down:
Old ideas
Clumsy screenplay
Dated direction
Music
Analysis:
It looked like Karunakaran tried to recreate the magic of his Tholi Prema movie. But he is clearly out of form and the storyline is not as rounded as Pawan Kalyan’s classic. Regular clichés in Karunakaran’s films such as hero-heroine teasing each other, hero hanging out with his friends gang, family drama and a climax in airport are all there. However, he couldn’t weave a nice and engaging love story around it. He couldn’t get the emotions right and even the technicians have let him down with weak output.
Barring a few fun moments between the lead pair and protagonist’s friends gang, there isn’t much on offer in this romantic comedy. Hero’s closely knit family, his past and the thread of heroine’s mother are used to create an emotional impact. But these are poorly written and executed that they hardly make any difference to the story. Karunakaran used far too many subplots to make it interesting, he should have kept it simple instead. Tej would have been lot better if the film is about the love story between the lead pair. Too many threads made it look clumsy and also didn’t give the romance part enough time to create any impact.
One would recall many of Karunakaran’s movies like Tholi Prema, Happy, Darling and Ullasamga utsahamga while watching Tej. He simply rehashed his old ideas and remixed them with a plot that isn’t novel either. One of the protagonists losing memory has been seen in many love stories around the world. Sai Dharam Tej’s urgency to break free from his action image should have been the reason to pick Karunakaran’s film. But sadly the director seems to be in total out of form to make a half decent romance comedy. Climax portion should have been the savior, but Karunakaran couldn’t use any of the aspects to give it a decent ending.
So Sai Dharam Tej’s search for a hit will still be on as Tej also is likely to end up as box office debacle. He should make wise choices and make them quickly as he is on the verge of losing audience’s trust with a series of bad films.
Verdict: No Special Love !
With successive debacles, mega hero Sai Dharam Tej had a ray of hope in the form of director Karunakaran who delivered blockbusters such as Tholi Prema. Given that Karunakaran is famous for ‘youthful’ love stories, and he has a big hit with Pawan Kalyan, mega fans were elated with the collaboration. Mega fans had high hopes on Karunakaran that he would bring back the ‘elusive’ success to Tej.
