Nee Tata Naa Birla Movie Review: Crude!

By Raju Shanbhag

Picture this. Ravichandran and Jaggesh are chasing goons in a jeep. Jaggesh has to pee urgently. Ravichandran is not willing to stop the jeep for such silly requests. Finally, Jaggesh takes out a bottle from the dashboard and pees in the bottle. If you thought reading this piece of literature was vulgar, please spare a thought for the audience who had come with their family and friends to watch two senior actors in Kannada in action, and who got pissed off by such pathetic taste of the filmmakers. Tata Birla has a series of such crude humor and double meaning dialogues which will put you off completely within first ten minutes of the film.

Everything about this film is crude. The background score attacks your ears with such merciless regularity that you may lose at least some of your hearing capacity when you come out of the theater. The script flies above your head and the dialogues hit you below your belt. The story is a cheap rip off of Hindi film “Garam Masala,” which makes the original look like a cult classic. This is quite a compliment for Garam Masala as that was one of the worst films of Priyadarshan.

In Tata Birla, the story runs erratically in different directions like an unbridled horse and runs all over the hapless audience before they know what hit them. It’s as if director Nagendra Magadi has no respect for any actors, technicians or even the very process of filmmaking as he makes two of the senior pros of the Kannada film industry stoop to such low levels. Both Jaggesh and Ravichandran mouth cheap dialogues, act cheap and make you seriously concerned about the future of the comedy films in Kannada.

It’s pathetic to see Ravichandran in such films and such roles. Yes, the man has contributed his share of crude comedy and vulgarity in his earlier films. But he is a dreamer and gave a whole new dimension to Kannada film industry when other filmmakers tried to hide their lack of creativity behind the “limited market for Kannada films” argument. In fact, he’s the man who introduced Glory and Grandeur to the Kannada movie industry. He seems completely out of place and looks bored in this movie. He tries to cover his frustration and bulging belly by wearing loose clothes, which makes his role look even more pathetic. It will be nice if he can stick to direction and make movies which he believes in. Even at his worst, his movies will not be as pathetic as Nee Tata Naa Birla.

But Jaggesh is completely at ease with this role. His comic timing is legendary and he delivers some of the non-crude comedy punches in the film, which are as rare as an oasis in the desert. It’s a pity that he doesn’t get  some meaty roles or dialogues to showcase his talent. There are six female leads in the film and apart from shedding their clothes at the slightest of provocation; they don’t have anything else to do. Jennifer Kotwal & Pooja Gandhi have nothing much to show in terms of acting skills, and they compensate this by showing their skins.

And what was a respected actress like Urvashi doing in this film? The director manages to make even Urvashi look cheap and sometimes vulgar. It will be nice if she checks the director and the story before she signs such nonsense scripts.

Watch Tata Birla only if you like cheap comedy. Yes, there are moments in the film, courtesy Jaggesh, which are really funny. But they are not worth the trouble of going all the way to the theatre and being subject to three hours of unrelenting torture.