While they managed to walk the rope between comedy and mass in most of their films, Actor Ravi Teja and Director Surender Reddy seem to have lost their balance this time around. Remember the word ‘mass’, it is soon going to destroy the industry. It is very evident that the director was full of ideas, ideas that were never new and trying all of them with absolutely no idea where to go. This is a film that will make you demand for an apology letter from the filmmakers.
The film starts off with Robinhood (Ravi Teja), son of Kalyan (also Ravi Teja) from the first instalment of Kick coming down to Hyderabad from the US to get back the land belonging to his father from a land grabbing realtor Ashish Vidyarthi. While Robinhood, a doctor, is busy beating the life out of land grabbers including Pandit Ravi Teja (Brahmanandam) and also treating them simultaneously so he can again beat the life out of them; he meets a beautiful writer Chaitra (Rakul) narrating some stories to a producer. Chaitra falls in love with Robinhood for absolutely no reason in about one minute of meeting him. Meanwhile, in Vilaspur, a village in Bihar, the villagers are looking for a God-like person who could rescue them from the atrocities of the local ruthless don Solomon Singh Thakur (Ravi Kishan) who calls himself ‘son of god’ almost every time he appears on screen.
Now the story picks up a little when one of the villager finds Robinhood beating the life out of a rowdy in Jedcherla and feels he is the god they have been waiting for all these days and the one who can rescue them from an apparent ‘son of god’. Now ‘son of god’ has taken in sons of every villager and turned them into his army to fight against their own families by drugging them repeatedly and from a very young age. How they bring Robin Hood to their village and make him fight against the Thakur using Chaitra forms the rest of the story. While first half gives a little hope, second half just destroys everything. Make a guess and you wont be wrong because there is nothing in this film that you have not seen before.
Story wise the film is a bad mashup of Mahesh Kaleja and every other Ravi Teja film that has released in last five years. As always, Brahmanandam seems the only member of the cast trying to save the sinking ship. Rakul Preet looks charming till you figure out the film hasn’t moved forward since first one hour. The worse yet is the untimely and absolutely unnecessary dream sequence songs giving a feel of the 90’s mentality of the director refusing to just let go the formula. This is by far the worst work by editor Gautham Raju. This is one film he would like to happily bury and never put it on his resume. Only light of decency was in cinematography of Manoj Paramahamsa who also has worked with the director for Race Gurram. While following a typical decade old pattern of dream sequences and a pre-climax item song seems boring enough, music by S. Thaman also has nothing new about it, nothing you will remember for long or nothing worth a special mention.
Given that Ravi Teja has mentioned in one of the interviews that Kick 2 will start the trend of franchise films in Telugu; it is fair to believe that you don’t desperately ruin your own franchise unless decisions have been made in haste or were utterly unthoughtful, as proved by a booing and disappointed crowd. There is a very big lesson the makers and the actor need to get out of this. Director Surender Reddy owes the viewers an apology and especially to Ravi Teja fans who have been on their toes right from the moment the sequel was announced.
Through a debatable new lean look, Ravi Teja is in his own monotonous mass league. Even though his dialogue delivery is at its best, long gone are days when you could expect variety from the actor. Rakul Preet does a very decent job by being pretty but that fails miserably to lift the bad storyline and the making. Along with very talented and decent appearances of Brahmanandam and Tanikella Bharani throughout, there is also extremely talented bunch like Rajpal Yadav, Ravi Kishan, Sanjay Mishra and Ashish Vidyarthi not being used to their capacity; hardly anything you can blame them for as confused filmmakers themselves don’t know where to take the story. As if that wasn’t enough, we have a very unexpected guest appearance of a slow-motion dove. Yes a dove, a computerized dove that often out of nowhere appears on screen multiple times to show its slow-motion moves. At 170 min the film seems longer than life. There is absolutely no kick in this one. Skip it if you value your time and money and expect to watch something new. I give this film Two Mugs o’ Beer.
-Poetbabu
One Mug o’ Beer – Curses, Machood, Bhenchood!
Two Mugs o’ Beer – Lame, Gandu, Chutiya.
Three Mugs o’ Beer – Nothing Great, Nothing Great.
Four Mugs o’ Beer – Lovely, Sahi hai!
Five Mugs o’ Beer – Great, fuck, Mazaa aagaya!
Note: I do not own the rights to any pictures appearing in this article. Rights belong to their respective owners.
Poetbabu 