Aa Ammayi Gurinchi Meeku Cheppali Movie Review: A tiring romance

With the exception of a couple of genuinely exciting scenes, director Indraganti Mohana Krishna's third outing with Sudheer Babu -- Aa Ammayi Gurinchi Meeku Cheppali -- is a highly predictable and stretched effort. Like their first collaboration, Sammohanam, this film, too, is set in the film industry and showcases Sudheer Babu as Naveen, a highly successful commercial film director. Naveen wants to change his image and in pursuit of the same, he comes across a video of Dr Alekhya (Krithi Shetty), an ophthalmologist, and is besotted by her looks so much that he wants to cast her in his new film. And that is pretty much the conflict at the heart of this ambitious romance.

Cast: Sudheer Babu, Krithi Shetty, Vennela Kishore
Director: Indraganti Mohana Krishna

Like Sammohanam, this 142-minute romance also promises an exciting story and is treated with humour and a dash of romance. The film begins on a promising note introducing Sudheer Babu as a director, but the narration meanders in too many unnecessary directions and at such a sluggish pace you feel like nodding off to sleep in your seat. The narration, however, redeems right before the intermission with an unexpected twist.

The film picks up the pace in the second hour and is enough to be compelling. The actual drama unfolds after Alekhya and her family budge to Naveen's proposal of turning a heroine. A light-hearted romance, the treatment in some parts however is a tad amateurish. A lot of situations seem forced and trite as if to create some tamasha.

Often even average films work because the characters drive the narrative. Things turn out the way they do because the characters are who they are. Aa Ammayi Gurinchi Meeku Cheppali might not have turned out this bad had the film's cast performed their roles convincingly. Even though Krithi Shetty was given a substantial role, she doesn't have the maturity required to portray it. She has a vacant expression throughout, at best coming off as a model for a cosmetic cream she would have applied in the film.

With Sudheer Babu's character, Indraganti has thrown satires at a few films and all of those are palpable instances that the audience can fully relate to. Sudheer effortlessly slips into the character and brings the right element of subtlety to his performance. However, he has to work on his expressions as his physical actions would hardly trigger the necessary emotions in the most important sequences of the film.

Most of the supporting cast, including Vennela Kishore, Rahul Ramakrishna, Srinivas Avasarala, and Srikanth Iyengar, who plays Alekhya's father, are all good in their character skins. The music of the film is just about alright, and only 'Kotha Kotha Ga' is sweet and well-picturised.

Aa Ammayi Gurinchi Meeku Cheppali doesn't work consistently because it's amateurishly directed and because even those scenes of a flashback and the climax seem so staged with a lot of melodrama. Even if you survive this film's flaws, chances are you feel exhausted as the director tries to dispel false notions about the film industry in an unusual way. Somewhere in this tiring film is a promising idea that hasn't been fully exploited.