BT Rating: (1.5/5)

Baboo’s magic goes haywire

Janumada Gelathi Movie Review By Raju Shanbhag

Tighten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, Dinesh Baboo is making films faster than your ability to see them. These days, the Malayali magician is canning a film every Friday and unleashing it on the unsuspecting viewers. Sitting in the theatre with 10+ people on Friday to watch Janumada Gelathi, we felt we were watching the lull before the storm.

Looks like the storm will rage this entire year end.

Almost every frame in Janumada Gelathi tells the story of an overworked director who is hell bent upon wrapping up his films fast and move on to the next one. But Dinesh Baboo has one distinct advantage in making such bad quality films like Janumada Gelathi. Every week, he will have a theatre to release his films as his films released last week will be vacating those theatres!

Srinagar Kitty lives with this mother (Jayanthi) who sheds tears exactly at three minute intervals for no apparent reasons. Luckily for viewers, he leaves his weeping mother and goes to a forest as a newly appointed forest ranger. The respite is short lived as Kitty meets a surprisingly slim and sadly dull Pooja Gandhi. The emotional overdrive is back on track as the lovers loiter around the Western Ghats singing tuneless songs. Watch out for the scene where Pooja Gandhi is about to fall in to an abyss as Dinesh Baboo touches unprecedented lows as director in this unintentionally hilarious scene. As if that was not enough, Dinesh Baboo repeats the same tricks he used in his earlier films like Suprabhata to bring together the couple.

Dinesh Baboo provides glimpses of his former glory only in the second half. Srinagar Kitty is now an underworld don (don’t ask me why); brandishing weapons and chopping off goondas with the same speed with which Dinesh Baboo releases his films. Half naked girls dance, heads roll and finally, the film ends as expected, giving you some time to brace up for the next Dinesh Baboo film.

Srinagar Kitty is the saving grace of this film. He emotes well and holds his ground even when Dinesh Baboo eggs him on to go emotionally berserk. Pooja Gandhi has lost her weight with it, her charm. Except in a couple of songs, she plays an innocent village girl without makeup and the results are not too pleasing. Other veterans like Avinash and Jayanthi join the pack in appropriate moments.

Surprisingly, Lakshmi Hegde, who plays the role of a journalist, looks better than Pooja Gandhi. She is a Dinesh Baboo favorite and it will not be surprising if she is promoted to better roles in his upcoming films (there are too many of them anyway!)

Watch Janumada Gelathi only if you are a Kitty fan. If you are a Pooja Gandhi fan, wait for her next film. If you are a Dinesh Baboo fan, god help you!