Vellana Kishore as innocent and funny private detective Sherlock Holmes reminds you of Naveen Polishetty in Agent Sai Sreenivas Athreya. The comparison is inevitable as the character of a funny private detective solving serious crimes is a set up inspired from Chiranjeevi and Jandhyala’s classic Chantabbai (1986). You also see the tagline of the movie as: ‘Chantabbai Taluka’. Maybe, the filmmakers were paying homage to Chiru and Jandhyala. Or, it’s just a plain ripoff just for the sake of it.
The intentions of ‘Writer’ Mohan to replicate the magic of Jandhyala-esque humor through Srikakulam accent and extremely quirky Vennala Kishore is not a sin. But, to rely upon the surface level thriller without depth and costume-copying without a soul of the movie feels like an insincere cheating of the original inspiration.
Balu is a telephone booth operator who falls in love with Brahma (Ananya Nagalla). Both are stuck with Police and a private detector as suspects. Honestly, there isn’t much to describe any character except that of Vennala Kishore that doesn’t turn its back on its own character. Out of nowhere, the good characters become utterly bad characters and then we are exposed to the mega truths discovered by Vennala Kishore that proves us that whatever we once believed about the characters is nothing but deception. Who is the deceptor here? The characters? Or, the filmmaker? To turn the character’s motive just for the sake of twists is the greatest disservice to the screenwriting. An almost-never-ending monologue can never be a justification for the laziest convenient writing.
Vennala Kishore with an accept of Srikakulam offers what he offers in almost every movie- a decent role with mild humorous touch. Apart from that there is nothing much for him to offer. However, the background story of Vennala Kishore in the second-half came off uninvited. The emotional part of their parents and relating it with the migration of villagers due to unemployment is a good sub-plot that feels like artificially stickered.
The music of Sunil Kashyap falls unimpressive except the village flashback sung by Mangli. The production design barely represents the era of Rajiv Gandhi’s death. Out of all this mediocrity only ‘Writer’ Mohan knows why the Part-2 of Srikakulam Sherlock is needed for this script- except using it as his bait.
TF Rating: 1.5/5
Srikakulam Sherlock is now playing in theatres.
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