Maa Naa Chiranjivi would fall under the children’s film genre since the entire movie revolves around the bond between the father & son that stays intact under very difficult circumstances. It is a well-intentioned movie which makes a genuine effort to entertain without being verbose or over-sentimental thanks to some good performances and a crisp storyline!!!

What is it about : Chiranjivi (Jagapathi Babu) is introduced as the 10th pass village landlord who is happy with his farmer’s lifestyle despite his riches. He gets married to the city-bred Neelima who soon squanders all his wealth in flop business ventures initiated by her rich friends. In the middle of all this, they have a son Vishwanath (Atluit) who adores Chiranjivi and prefers to stay with him when Neelima walks out on Chiranjivi for a better future in the city. Soon, father & son land up in Hyderabad as Chiranjivi decides to educate his son in a top English medium school so that he doesn’t end up like him. The rest of the movie is about the trials and tribulations that Chiranjivi goes through to arrange the school fees while making sure his son does not see his struggle. He weaves the story of being a CID officer on a secret mission to his son so that he can hide the many different menial jobs he does over the day. He meets with different characters such as MS Narayana, Ali, Brahmanandam, etc. who help him in his journey.

What Is Good: Jagapathi Babu carries the movie entirely on his shoulders and he comes up with an impressive performance as a caring father who is ready to do anything for his son. He is well-supported by Atluit who plays Vishwanath and some of the scenes between father and son are very touching. Thankfully, though there were many opportunities for some scenes to end up as melodramatic tear-jerkers, the director managed to keep the emotions under control. The comic track between Ali and Brahmanandam is funny while movie steers clear of any vulgarity or item numbers.

What Is Bad: What doesn’t gel at times is the innocence of the kid when he believes the CID stories of Chiranjivi despite not having a roof over his head. Though the film starts off with the son’s perspective of his father, most of the film is about father’s perspective of the struggles he is going through. Due to this, we don’t get to register the son’s perspective of the whole thing. There are three songs in the film and none of them make any impact on the audience.

Me Thinks: This can be a one- time watch for the family audiences. It might not have the emotional connect that a movie like “Little Soldiers” had many years back, but Maa Naana Chiranjivi is definitely an effort to be different from the commercial pot-boilers.

Tailpiece: Most of the characters in the movie are named after movie personalities and so you have Chiranjivi, Vishwanath, Rajanala, Mani Ratnam, Varma, Seenu Vytla, etc. Wonder what the director’s intention was behind this!!!