What Has Gone Wrong With Mahesh’s Khaleja?

No other movie of Mahesh had been as anticipated as Khaleja was. It is because the film was sort of Mahesh’s comeback after long hiatus of 3 years. His previous film Athidi released in 2007 was a drastic failure. On the other hand Trivikram who was zing with super success of his previous, Jalsa was the director of this film. Trivikram and Mahesh have earlier collaborated for stylish hit flick Athadu. Moreover, Anushka after her phenomenal hit film Arundhati is onboard. With these many elements attached, the stakes soared high on Khaleja.
The story of revolves round a small remote village plagued by a strange disease. The disease is intentionally spread by a corporate giant to evacuate the village rich in uranium ore under it.  The disease kills lot of people leaving only few hundreds to their fate. The soothsayer of the village predicts that God would come to their village for rescue of remaining people. Protagonist Seetha Rama Raju (Mahesh Babu) a cab driver incidentally gets into the village and he is believed to be God by the village folks. Though initially irked by villagers’ antics, Soon Raju realizes that he is God-sent to save the village from the clutches of company.
Mahesh looked exceptionally classy in cool costumes. He was superb with body language and exceptionally good at mouthing typical dialect for this movie couldn’t save the movie to reach the banks. Though his hard work was very much visible hasn’t paid off at the box-office.
Anushka though looked beautiful faced criticism as looking elderly to Mahesh, since she has put on little bit of weight compared to her previous films.
Prakash Raj as usual was at his best as villain, but has a limited screen space and gets into conflict with hero only during the climax. This is not game with Telugu audience who are used with hero-villain clash throughout the film with heavy dialogues. Rao Ramesh was convincing as a soothsayer. Shafi was a surprise package in this film, he excelled in his role. High quality actors like Brahmanandam, MS Narayana and Kota Srinivas in their inadequate roles have been wasted.
The film has some good moments in bits and parts. Especially the scene where hero asks for Rs 10 for himself, his wish will be rejected by God and when he asks the same to feed a hungry boy, his wish is fulfilled. One amazing song that comes to our mind on the name of Khaleja is “Sada siva sanyasi” a beautifully penned devotional song.
First half has nothing more than some comedy that hardly have laughs. The dialogues are good but here and there missed the grip and not up to the expectation. Emotion elements are forced but not convincing enough.The actual story starts from interval towards the climax. Direction of the film is good in parts and screenplay should have been more effective. Trivikram should have ironed the script better and made it concise. Screenplay was bit complicated for common audiences to connect. Though Trivikram mark was visible throughout it didn’t make much impact.
Music of Mani Sharma also did nothing to push the movie a inch. Only savior being “Sada siva sanyasi” Rest of the songs are not even on slightest of memory. In addition to all these Khaleja was released along side of Rajinikanth – Shankar’s graphic wonder Robo.

Khaleja?