Cast: Harsha Chemudu, Harsha Vardhan, Divya Sripada, Balakrishna Neelakantapu, Bhadram and others
Crew:
Music Director: Sricharan Pakala
Cinematographer: Deepak Yeragera
Editor: Karthik Vunnava
Producers: Ravi Teja and Sudheer Kumar Kurru
Writer – Director: Kalyan Santosh
Sundaram Master Movie Rating: 2/5
Sundaram Master has caught the eye of movie lovers with its unique theme and trailers. Harsha Chemudu, a well known comedian is playing a leading role in the movie and Mass Maharaja Ravi Teja, being a producer added to the buzz. Megastar Chiranjeevi, Naga Chaitanya and Sai Dharam Tej have supported the movie and promoted it as well. The movie released on 23rd February 2024 all over and now, let’s discuss about the movie in detail.
Plot:
Sundara Rao(Harsha Chemudu), a completely narcissistic and money-minded person, gets a job offer to become English teacher for Miriyala Metta, tribal village on the condition of him being promoted to DEO. He enters the village with great difficulty and finds out that the villagers live still in pre-independence era. Their village has been invaded by Britishers and Raja Saab(Brahmanandam) helps them to sort out the issue amicably. He advises them to cut off their ties with outside world and helps them learn English, for communication.
Since, he and his lineage is no more, the village requests current governing body which is still British in their belief, for an Indian Black English teacher. Current MLA(Harshavardhan) appoints Sundar Rao to find out the most precious thing that the village harbours unknowingly. Hence, Sundar enters the village trying to find out the treasure. He finds out that the villagers live life in an unique way and give names based on the skills. And the villagers push away white skinned persons and one white skinned lady(Divya Sripada) lives alone due to this discrimination. Will Sundaram find out the treasure? Watch the movie to know more.
Analysis:
Sundaram Master team have noble ideas. The movie tries to preach nomad lifestyle which involves you living it while basking in the glory of nature. It tries to tell us that money has no value, unless and until, we put all the onus on it. It tries to tell that being selflessly selfish and childishly matured is a way to live life to the fullest. While these noble ideas are great they needed to be translated on the screen with more soul and perfection. Writers fail in creating such unique situations where we can really connect with the philosophy of the film. The ideal world looks unique to explore but our interest fizzles out as soon as the jokes begin. Second hour drags on the premise too much that we end up looking at the screen in fatigue rather than awe. With a much better script and spirited execution, the movie could have been a good one to watch out for all sections of audiences.
Rather it ends up being an under baked rare meat dish that is hard to complete. The writing had many loop holes starting from setting logics for this unique village to exist and also the pretext with which Sundaram enters the village could have been well thought out too. A village development officer (VDO) would be ideally sent to such tribal and remote villages first for estimating the lifestyle and sustainability of the villagers living in the village. A government teacher can only be transferred to any village that has a government school and that said village partake in electoral voting as part of a ZPTC or MPTC or Panchayat Raj. So, sending a VDO instead of a teacher would’ve been ideal for the premise and that VDO can become their proverbial “teacher” too.
This is being said to give an idea about how the script and logical loop holes in the movie could have been improved from the basic level. If the humor and characters had clicked, these kind of logical loop holes could be overlooked but for them to work out such kind of minute level details would’ve lent to the overall script being better and stronger. Harsha Chemudu is good in few comedy scenes but his ability to emote needs improvement. Divya Sripada and others have been under utilised. Cinematography is good but doesn’t give you a stunning experience that this film and theme demand. The production design is apt and music by Sri Charan Pakala is underwhelming. On the whole, movie could have been much better with a better script.
Positives:
Harsha Chemudu performance
Production Design
Noble Premise
Intention of makers
Negatives:
Draggy narrative
Melodramatic Scenes
Incoherent in latter half
Impact Less Messaging
Sundaram Master Movie Bottom-line: Lacks Impact