30 Rojullo Preminchadam Ela Movie Review: Making a mockery of divine intervention

30 Rojullo Preminchadam Ela

30 Rojullo Preminchadam Ela Cast: Pradeep Machiraju, Amritha Aiyer

30 Rojullo Preminchadam Ela Director: Phani Pradeep (Munna)

30 Rojullo Preminchadam Ela Stars: 1.5/5

30 Rojullo Preminchadam Ela, the latest Telugu-language release, is a reincarnation story where divine intervention promises to be the much-awaited inflection point. But what do we get instead? Unceasing farce. Given the kind of comedy the writer-director Phani Pradeep had in mind, he should have shown the behaviour of the lead pair as the workings of a ghost and not the mediation of the divine. 

Just as India was about to get freedom from the British, a Kusthi fighter (Pradeep Machiraju) and his girlfriend (Amritha Aiyer) died after developing some serious differences ahead of their wedding day. Decades later, they are reborn as Arjun and Akshara, two Engineering students who hate each other to the core and spend most of their day insulting each other. 

In SS Rajamouli's Magadheera, the lovers felt the spark of their previous births without active divine interference. Here, the director involves a rishi-like spiritual man and his puzzled disciple to convince the audience that we are watching a love story and not some juvenile comedy. We keep expecting coming-of-age drama, only to see dollops of cheap humour and more cheap humour. There are more racist 'jokes' on a friend (Viva Harsha) than there are lines about love. This, in a reincarnation film. Just imagine!

A major drawback is that, even in the second half, we don't see Arjun and Akshara showing a sense of wonderment about what has happened to them. They are facing the most perplexing and life-altering situation and yet, they continue being the nutjobs they have been. There should have been some glue bringing them together rather than it being facile self-realization after witnessing a woman almost died.

Arjun's inability to convince his father to buy boxing gloves for him is a motif that the film doesn't milk wisely. There is nothing heart-touching about the way a father (Posani Krishna Murali puts in a convincing act) patches up with his eloped daughter. These tropes lead to some cliched drama and nothing more. More so, if they had to show these typical ideas, why did they need the reincarnation element in the first place?

Anup Rubens' music, especially the ultra-popular song 'Neeli Neeli Aakasam', is the only dignified thing that is there. Pradeep Machiraju is a TV superstar in the Telugu States, and he fails to evoke laughs. Nor does he manage to make the audience well up in the emotional scenes (which, by the way, are too underdeveloped). Amritha Aiyer of RED fame steals the march in the second half. And that's not necessarily a compliment, given that bettering a hammy actor is not a fabulous job. 

There is an elaborate episode where the mothers bash up their boozing daughters (lodging at a hostel named 'Free Birds Woo-Men's Hostel) in the style of Mahesh Babu and the likes in mass masala films. In a film that is allegedly about the greatness of love, this is the quality of humour they have come up with. Phew!