Popular music director Vandemataram Srinivas is better known for his folk based songs. He had turned into an actor for a movie called ‘Ammulu’. This time around he gets hold of the directorial mike with the film ‘Badmash’. Let’s see how his directorial venture is.

What’s it about: Avinash is a typical good for nothing chap, or so he seems though he finds a seat in an engineering college with strict disciplinary rules. The college principal, Nagi Reddy, doesn’t like sports, or fun or the typical love stories that happen in colleges. His daughter Amrutha, is much like him and she too studies in the same college.

Avinash, who is a kind of a rebel, atleast for the college, helps a college mate and her boyfriend. In the process Amrutha, changes her views about college-love stories and falls madly for Avinash. When the girl’s father comes to know of it, the hero challenges him on phone to find who he is if he can. Apart from various other side tracks, how long Avinash keeps the girl’s father from recognizing his true side forms the rest of the story.

What is Good: The comedy department headed by Dharmavarapu Subrahmanyam is good. He’s got probably more footing in the film than the heroine has (minus the songs). Venu Madhav impresses every time with special comedy tracks written for him and Suman Shetty evokes few laughs too. New comer Ekta resembles Hansika Motwani in many ways, and tries to be as much glamorous as she can, while also mixing it up with traditional wear. She tries to get her chemistry with the hero of the film with some success.

The themes the film touches are worth discussing on big screen at a deeper level.

What is bad: Debutant hero Naga Siddharth needs to work on his diction, dialogue delivery, dance, expressions and body language. Basically everything. The guy who acted as a sadistic villain does pretty ordinary job. However, it is not because of them that the film looks like badly mashed potato. It is the script that calls for serious questioning, from the beginning to the end.

Out of 60 odd scenes that a typical serious version of a two and a half hour film needs, less than half of them are dedicated to touch serious issues. The other scenes are spent in creating comedy scenes between those serious moments. And finally the climax is haphazardly done.

Technical Departments: : Though the songs are pretty unnecessary, it is the choreography that fails the songs which are picturized a bit carefully. Vandemataram Srinivas has shown some improvement with his music but the film never manages to say what its USP is. The director in Vandemataram Srinivas doesn’t make a mark at all. Casting and editing should have been done more carefully.

Final Point: Telugu directors, especially the first timers, are showing some level of talent in individual scenes. But most of them have been failing to keep the momentum after such a scene arrives. ‘Badmaash’ too suffers from the same.