"Dear Comrade" (Telugu/Tamil/Malayalam/Kannada) Film Review

The most hyped Vijay Deverekonda in recent times comes with an elaborate buildout of 169 minutes about a love story which has many overt and subtextual messages - of which the main message is about how a lady cricketer fights sexual harassment at work with help of her lover who stands like a wall for her - whom everyone calls "Dear Comrade". Bharat Kamma directs this colorful film with dazzling cinematography and enchanting musical score by Justin Prabhakaran. The film takes you into the world of Bobby and Lilly (played by Vijay Deverekonda and Rashmika) whose journey has many fateful turns, most of them predictable and self-created. Performances-wise, the film's honors go to Rashmika first and Vijay Deverekonda next for raising the bar. Rashmika gets a role of a lifetime which even top-paid heroines don't enjoy these days, she seems to speak a lot with her eyes and packs quite a punch with classy costumes and neat acting without much ado. Vijay must be complimented for taking on a role that supports the heroine's character throughout.

How good is the film? To be fair, the treatment is honest and leisurely but the director misses out in leveraging the right mix of emotions at crucial moments. The first half is painfully slow and listless, takes too much time to establish the character of Bobby and Lilly, their divergent paths, their friends and their world views with too many songs. The number of songs and scenes in the college could have been cut down brutally just like the 'canteen song' which got removed n the film. After a series of lovely films on cricket like "Jersey" and "Majili", here's an opportunity to create a feast of visuals about Women's cricket (and what ails it from taking off?) but crucial moments fall flat as the director jumps-cut to another scene. Like in the first half, when Lilly begs to play in gully cricket played by the boys, the director should have shown how she batted then itself instead of jumping to the stadium scene where she plays with a flourish to win in a big match. Cricket is an adrenalin-pumping game for Indians which can surcharge emotions in any scene but in the entire second half, Lilly's cricketing exploits were missing in action. Moments like this were under-capitalized which makes the film drop into a lower orbit of a routine love story where hero's antics are shown more mileage than a lady cricketer's struggles to build her dream innings. In both the first and second half, many scenes give you a deja vu sense of earlier films of Vijay like "Evade Subramanyam", "Geeta Govindam" and "Arjun Reddy"; most of the early scenes seem a modern version of Nagarjuna's "Shiva". For Vijay Deverekonda, this film doesn't add much to his powerhouse acting skills that he seems to possess because at times he subtracts the film's intensity with his performance. Focus on him in the first half is the fatal flaw which deprives the audience of that extra wow factor. Add to that there is an unexplained inconsistency towards the end where the hero is unrepentant, impulsive and emotional throughout the film but capitulates to admission of guilt in the end in a crucial courtroom scene - could that be better handled to raise the heroism quotient or was it necessary to get the "heroininism" we leave at that. Despite that Vijay's histrionics and stunts come out good but he has to quickly re-invent himself to change the diction and body language lest it fall into the zone of lazy acting, for want of variety. His dancing skills have definitely got better, it must be said.

Technically, film's editing and dialogue-writing departments are lackluster and could have done a lot better with sharpness. Director Bharat Kamma has good sensibilities to create stories with strong underlying messages but he has to somewhere overcome a struggle between commercial intensity and visual aesthetics a'la Mani Ratnam. The films which became cult classics are usually films with intensity, laser-sharp focus on main plot without detours and distractions. Unfortunately, "Dear Comrade" touches upon many small themes like student politics, communism, anger-management, career aspirations of modern lovers and finally kicks the can down too late with the main theme of sexual harassment in cricket's highest echelons. If this was driven home earlier, it would have created a massive impact. It doesn't. Music composer Justin Prabhakaran deserves a hat-tip - his album will sail through the tunnel of time for its versatility and melody. His music has more maturity, finesse and balance between Indian and Western music than some of the new-age composers we have heard. His BGM with half-violin strings and rhythmic percussions shows his class and makes it one of the most exciting scores in recent times. One cameo that stands out is co-producer Yash Rangineni's outburst as a BCCI chairman - that whole episode upholds the dignity and seriousness of the world's richest cricketing body. On the whole, you can watch it but once though with lots of patience but don't go with great expectations and let it sponge on you.

Rating: 2.75/5

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