“Bheemavaram Bullodu” is a mass comedy entertainer starring Sunil and Esther Noronha in lead roles. The film is is directed by Uday Shankar and produced by Suresh Babu on Suresh Productions banner. Anup Rubens is the music director for the film. Sunil failed to score a hit with Mr.Pellikoduku and is planning to bounce back with Bhimavaram Bullodu.
The film’s story revolves around Rambabu (Sunil), a timid guy from Bheemavaram who prefers to stay away from troubles. One day, the doctor says that he has brain tumour and will live only for 10 days due to changed hospital reports. When the doctor said this he tries to kill himself. But a Good Samaritan (Tanikella Bharani) comes in the way and advises him to do some thing good to the soieity in his remaining days . He relocates to Hyderabad to rid the city off all the unlawful elements and help the society for a good cause. To start with he worked towards eliminating the bad guys in the city with the help of his brother who is a police officer. Finally the diagnosis turns out to be wrong, but he’s made too many enemies. What happens when Rambabu realises that he does not have brain tumour forms the crux of the story.
In this process he also falls in love with Nandini (Esther) the daughter of an eccentric film director, who hates love in real life. Now it’s the sort of plot that’s as old as the rocks but with some skilful screenplay and smart writing it could have still been salvaged
Script writers in Telugu cinema seem to be out of ideas when writing original characters for Sunil. Every character seems to be an extension of the mild mannered, soft spoken village bum, Ramudu, he played in Andala Ramudu, his first film as a solo lead. In fact three out of the five lead characters that Sunil has played till date have been named some variation of Ramu! Be it the all fearing Kovelamudi Ramu in Maryada Ramanna, the very faint hearted constable Sivarama Krishna in Thadaka, you can see the pattern in the names.
Sunil plays a very docile Bheemavaram native, Ram Babu who can get cowed down even by the prospect of catching flu. One morning he gets hit by a tumbler and to his shock gets diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor. The doctor gives him ten days to live and he’s left gutted. Unable to deal with becoming the object of sympathy of the entire village, he tries to kill himself by falling under a running train. But another cancer stricken man (Tanikella Bharani) rescues him in the nick of time and gives him a pep talk.
Bhimavaram Bullodu’ is an unimpressive comedy that will not appeal to any section of audience. It is hard to sit through this film unless you are provided with the facility of fast forwarding the boring parts. You will be terribly disappointed if you are expecting genuine comedic moments from ace comedian Sunil
Inspired, our man sets out to acquire enough good karma so that his deeds live on after his death. So he lands in Hyderabad to wipe away all the bad guys from its precincts. He transforms into a veritable superman who knows no fear. But the moment he learns that his illness was a result of misplaced medical tests, all his fears comeback to haunt him.
The man has shed all the flab and built some rippling muscles, but to no avail. Guess he has a very ‘Ramu’ sort of face. May be he just likes to play to that modest looking, meek man stereotype that is borrowed from the old adage – Ramudu manchi baludu (Ramudu is a good boy). The name has become synonymous with the good natured but some what dim witted underdog characters in Tollywood.
Unfortunately that doesn’t happen. Despite having a three time Nandi Award winning actor like Sunil in the midst the filmmakers rely on a slew of forced comic interjections by the likes of Thagubothu Ramesh, Jayaprakash Reddy and Sayaji Shinde to infuse some entertainment. But they end up failing miserably. The writing is so blah that the gags are more likely to induce yawns than laughs.
Sunil is left mouthing half baked lines with a goofy straight face and he ends up looking like a bad caricature. The music and camera work seem like a throwback to small budget comedy films of the nineties.
In one extended comic episode we have Sunil running away from the villains by spraying laughing gas at them. You’d just wish the filmmakers had the good sense of spraying the theatres with some doses of laughing gas.