Sreekaram Movie Review: A mediocre film full of cliches and stock scenes

Title: Sreekaram 
Cast: Sharwanand, Priyanka Mohan, Rao Ramesh, Sai Kumar and others 
Director: B Kishor
Rating: 2

Somewhere in the film, a proud father (played by the talented Rao Ramesh) gets a nameplate designed for his son (played by Sharwanand, the film's omnipotent hero). The plate has these words on it: "Karthik, Farmer". Actually, it is incomplete. It should have been this instead: "Karthik, Telugu Cinema Farmer". Considering how Karthik miraculously changes the face of his native village in the span of a song, he is more a Telugu Cinema Farmer than a real farmer. And it is sad that the film is only 132 minutes long. Had it been 10 minutes longer, he would have changed the face of the country and made it Agrinirbhar Bharat. 

The premise of Sreekaram, the latest 'Agriculture runs in our veins' film from the stable of Tollywood, is that we are running out of farmers. Karthik feels that he should quit his software job and become a farmer. His farmer-father, who has been rendered indebted, doesn't like his son's decision. It's now up to Karthik to win the entire village on his side and regain the trust of his distressed dad.

Does the film have spiritual resemblances to Mahesh Babu's 2019 hit Maharshi? The films are similar only to the extent that they both think farming will be extinct if we don't become farmers on a war footing (which is an irrational thing to say, considering that we have an excess of farmers in India). Similarities end here. Maharshi had a wide span, and its antagonist was a land-grabbing corporate monster. Sreekaram is a small film in comparison because it embodies all villainy in Sai Kumar, who plays an evil moneylender. The bad man is not only a cardboard character but also gets transformed so easily. It's good that the hero doesn't realize that Sai Kumar is an evil guy till the climax. Otherwise, he would have changed him in a snap and the film would have come to an end by the interval.

Sreekaram revels in stock scenes, binaries and cliches. The while-collar migrant is distressed because he can't be by the side of his ailing mother. His depression is juxtaposed with how the villagers enjoy playing kabaddi in the fields. The film's protagonist suffers from saviour syndrome. He mobilizes support, coordinates massive activities with practised ease and, before you know, he has built a whole distribution network during the lockdown! The villagers are condemned to landlessness and hopelessness and wait for Sharwanand's character to deliver his next game-changing speech. 

Writer Sai Madhav Burra, who is currently working on SS Rajamouli's RRR, pens Good Morning messages in the name of dialogues. "Together, we can achieve anything. Good Morning." 

When the villagers are not uncles overflowing with kindness, they become caricatures, only to regain their goodness after a montage song. For a film that claims to show solutions to agricultural problems, the lead man finds it hard to convince his father but changing the occupational profile of the village is child's play. 

When he is not engineering reverse migration (of people from cities to villages), the hero is a victim of the heroine's reverse stalking. You have to see the romantic track. Whenever Priyanka Arul Mohan is falling behind him, the hero comes with an 'I don't have time for you because I am busy vomiting solutions all the time' expression on his face. Does anything more need to be said about the imbecilic universe of Sreekaram? 

WATCH Sreekaram movie trailer below: 

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