Brahmanandam's son Gautam hasn't had the kind of a kick start that he'd would like to have in his filmy career. Almost six years later he is just about making amends with his next film Vareva. Is it going to make a difference to his career? Let's see.

What’s it about: Rishi (Gautham) is a happy go lucky young chap living in Vishakapatnam. He doles away his time with his group of friends, and when necessary he rescues them with his fighting skills! He leaves his parents to join in an Engineering College in Hyderabad. It isn’t long before he falls in love with a girl Sandhya (Shambhavi), coincidentally studying in his class! Now Sandhya is a daughter of a filthy rich businessman (Devan), whose seriousness can easily be doubted as villainy. While Rishi is thinking about Sandhya, he also happens to meet her father. Rishi does a Munnabhai on the rich dad, helps him break his unnecessary seriousness and connects to him to his daugther. It isnt’ long before Devan realizes that Sandhya has already fallen for Rishi and her improved relationship with her father means that she discloses about her love interest. Just then Rishi meets with a deadly accident, and everyone thinks that it is Devan who did it. However, it is not Devan, but a Vizag goon, Bhupathi (Ashish Vidyarthi), whose brother in law Rishi had accidentally killed while saving his friend.

With Bhupathi’s men chasing him Rishi comes up with a plan to end it all once and for all. How he does it forms the second half of the movie!

What is Good: Gautham seems to have improved ‘a bit’ on his expressions, dancing and fighting skills when compared to his first film. The new girl Shambhavi has nothing much to do except for looking cute in few scenes before songs. However, the movie is nothing without mentioning the small contributions of various comedy actors – Venu Madhav, Brahmanandam, Vennela Kishore , Krishna Bhagavan and importantly Master Bharath. Bharath has been given a track that isn’t enough for generating laughs, but the young chap manages to evoke laughs.

With all the names mentioned so far it shouldn’t be too hard for anyone to guess how on what exactly the movie focues – generate laughs, no matter how they come.

What is bad: The story of the film is simply not enough to be a film story. We have quite a few scenes in Hyderabad, and then the movie moves back to Vizag – why or how this change of places makes any difference to the story is left to anyone’s guess. The number of comedy scenes simply outnumber the number of scenes in which the story progresses. Unfortunately for the filmmakers not all the comedy situations are worthy of a smile! Also, the director seems to have given all the artists free license to be as loud as possible and it hardly helps the cause of the film!

However, the biggest problem with the film is Gautham himself. Though he has improved, that doesn’t mean that he has improved enough. He neither has the charishma of a boy next door, nor does have in it him to be a mass hero!

Technical Departments : It could be said that movies like Vareva hardly given any importance to screenplay. Every movie seems to have some good dialogue and it is no different for this film too. Camerawork isn’t great and the same holds true for editing. Music is substandard, and songs just serve as a showcase for Gautham’s dancing skills. When we see a shot, supposedly in Vizag, with the Kutubshahi Tombs clearly visible in the background, you know how much of ‘homework’ has been done on the movie. Director Mahi might have thought that he could pull off a Srinu Vytla kind of a film here. It needs great self belief, and immense power of convincing the audiences to do what Srinu Vytla does. Vareva says that Mahi lacks both.

Final Point: Vareva is a poor man’s Srinu Vytla film, and it is for those who might want to kill time with silly laughs. Others can spare themselves.