'Ambajipeta Marriage Band', coming out from the banners of GA2 Pictures, Dheeraj Mogilineni Entertainment and Mahayana Motion Pictures, is a February 2nd release. Here is our review of the film:
Plot:
Malli (Suhas) is in love with Lakshmi (debutante Shivani Nagaram), the sister of the Ambajipeta's head (Nithin Prasanna as Venkat). On the other hand, Venkat lusts after Padma (Saranya Pradeep), Malli's twin sister.
Things come to a head when Padma is humiliated by Venkat on her birthday. To add insult to injury, even Malli is tormented. The rest of the film is about how Malli and Padma take on the might of Venkat and teach him a lesson.
Performances:
Suhas looks exhausted in the emotional scenes and that's what was required of him. He looks every bit the part he is playing. Shivani Nagaram doesn't make a solid debut. She has a long way to go before she can grab the audience's attention.
The film is dragged down by Nithin Prasanna's uni-dimensional character and monotonous acting. He screams and screams and screams, and doesn't care to emote anything else. Saranya Pradeep, as a school teacher with a voice, fails to show the agony of her character. She delivers a skin-deep performance. Goparaju Ramana and Jagadeesh Prathap Bandari are seen as a wedding band leader and Malli's all-weather friend, respectively. Their acting chops are familiar.
Technical aspects:
Sekhar Chandra's background music is derivative, lacking originality. 'Gumma' and 'Maa Ooru Ambajipeta', however, are worthy of appreciation.
The cinematography by Wajid Baig and the production values at large befit the legacy of Geetha Arts that GA2 Pictures has been upholding.
Post-Mortem:
Written and directed by Dushyanth Katikaneni, the film suffers from an acute lack of inventive ideas. 'Ambajipeta Marriage Band' is the kind of film you get after you write the interval and the climax with second-rate inspiration from Tamil and Malayalam movies. The two halves of the film have been written backward; everything is terminally cliched. The screenplay in the first half alternates between portraying Malli's cuteness and Venkat's mean-spirited arrogance. The trajectory of the story is hackneyed to the core.
The blossoming of the love between Malli and Lakshmi would have been soulful had this film been made ten or fifteen years ago. It brims with cute innocence but is shorn of even a single fresh idea. On the other hand, Venkat continues to be the flustered man he is. His impulsive brother is another routine character who looks like he has arrived on the sets of this film straight from a 1980s movie. The heroine's girl gang tries too hard to make the audience smile.
The second half is where the actual story takes off. Even here, some run-of-the-mill scenes unfold. The police station scene is old-school screenplay with no nuance. The path Malli and Padma choose against Venkat comes with forced ideas and simplistic events.
The main love story is ignored in the second half. Fine. That's not a minus in itself. But then, in the process, Suhas' Malli receives a step-motherly treatment. We have to wait till the climax for Malli to come into his own. His dejection over Lakshmi's fate isn't explored well.
Closing Remarks:
'Ambajipeta Marriage Band' has no fresh ideas. A lot of what is shown in the movie has been seen in some or the other film already.
