Dookudu (2011)

My first Telugu movie and I chose to see it for Mahesh Babu alone. I was impressed by his style and the hype that he has among Telugu movie watchers. Superstar Mahesh as the title proudly proclaims and I must say this man has amazing screen presence, solid dialog delivery, decent dancing skills, good emotive skills and above all he is a superstar without a shade of a doubt.

In Dookudu he is a cop (Ajay) and while he is not busy plotting the baddies' downfall as an undercover cop, he takes care of his father (Shankar Narayana) who has just recovered from a coma. At some other times, he woos the girl he covets. There are adequate doses of drama and staged comedy. The main plot diverts quite often. When the baddies are the very same people who were responsible for backstabbing his father, it becomes more convenient for our hero. He uses brawn, lots of staged comic drama and of course some pure star power to overthrow the baddies led by Nayak.

There are some nice songs by Thaman. The movie is pretty long at close to 3 hours but Mahesh Babu holds the movie together. There is no crass comedy or skin show. It is a pretty decent movie for commercial standards. But, the action scenes are absurd. They have taken too much cinematic liberty.

Sonu Sood plays the typical Indian commercial movie villain. There are other villains too like Sayaji Shinde. Brahmanandam tries to make us laugh with his trademark style. Prakash Raj has a larger than life 'messiah' like role

On the whole, a wholesome treat for Mahesh Babu fans as we get to see him as a mass hero, a police officer, a politician, the entertainer etc. all in one movie. His punch dialogs were a rage, thanks to the subtitles, I was able to enjoy them as much as a Telugu speaking watcher.

VERDICT: Proper masala entertainer. Mahesh Babu carries the movie to the winning post.