Tenali Ramakrishna BA BL movie review: Insanely unfunny

It requires great skill and a unique talent to direct a comedy entertainer. It may seem like a lighthearted affair, but to get the right material, you need to understand the fundamentals of that genre. You need to do a lot of research and maintain a consistent sense of fun with clever writing. Failing which, you end up making a raucous comedy like Tenali Ramakrishna BA BL. Starring Sundeep Kishan and Hansika Motwani, the film showcases the creative bankruptcy of director G Nageswara Reddy, who hasn't delivered anything exceptional or funny in a long time.

Cast: Sundeep Kishan, Hansika Motwani, Varalaxmi Sarathkumar
Direction: G Nageswara Reddy

Kurnool-based Tenali Ramakrishna (Sundeep Kishan) is a struggling lawyer who seeks new ways to keep building his practice while living a life on his own terms. Rather than offering compromises for long-pending cases with out-of-court settlements, his father Durga Rao (Raghu Babu) insists Tenali earn some respect in life. Tenali falls in love with a naive lawyer, Rukmini (Hansika Motwani), the daughter of Chakravarthy (Murali Sharma), a leading criminal lawyer in the town. Tenali digs up a ploy against a local humanitarian Varalaxmi (Varalaxmi Sarathkumar), who was falsely implicated in the murder case of journalist Bhupal. What follows is how Tenali with his quirks and wit brings those responsible to justice.

Tenali Ramakrishna BA BL, which was promoted as a quirky entertainer, turns out to be a load of rubbish with a rally of old-fashioned gags that misfire. The script has no integrity and the film doesn’t convey a point of view. The performances don’t rise above the material either. The narration is replete with a series of utterly illogical scenes and the director doesn't spare even the women from talking nonsense.

Sample this: Rajitha, who plays Chakravarthy’s wife, asks if his "Madhya Pradesh" — an alias she uses for the central organ of the human body — is okay after he escapes unhurt from an accident. Then, there’s also a courtroom scene where the judge loses his temper with a witness and calls out the Circle Inspector with a different name (Kiran Kumar) than what's on his badge. These are the least offensive scenes in a film that assaults our senses so much that it’s hard to believe the writers thought this was funny. And as if to ensure there is no respite to our ordeal, we are also inflicted with songs in the middle of all this.

I still don’t understand why Sundeep Kishan, who expressed his wish to work in different cinema, or Hansika, who has become choosy in Telugu, would agree to be a part of Tenali Ramakrishna BA BL. Ten or fifteen years from now, this is exactly the kind of film that they may regret doing and wish to erase from their filmography and memories.

As for us, watching this film makes us feel like we are trapped in an elevator for 128 minutes.