Review :Goutham (Gopichand) is a billionaire and his father gives him a year’s time to enjoy his life to the fullest. The deal between the two is that after a year, he’ll take over his father’s businesses. The catch is that, beneath his seemingly perfect life, Goutham is clueless about what happiness or hunger feels like. On the other hand, Nanda (also played by Gopichand), who hails from a lower-middle class background, wants to die rich and his father keeps criticising his aspirations.
One fine day, Goutham and Nanda bump into each other, and since both of them are quite vexed up with their respective lives. The rest is the story is about how their new life changes them internally.
Right from the 60s, several filmmakers have adapted this storyline to make family dramas like Ramudu Bheemudu, Ganga Manga, Seeta Geetha and Hello Brother to name a few. However, Sampath Nandi’s version of the tale lacks a vision and he tries to toy with similar ideas without offering anything new both in terms of content and form.
When Goutham sets out on a journey of self-discovery in the opening act of the film, you begin to feel a sense of deja vu and it turns into a predictable story where a protagonist finds a family and solves all their problems one by one. Similarly, when Nanda takes Goutham’s place, he’s bowled over by the riches in the new house and questions why would anyone give up such a lavish lifestyle.
There’s barely anything dramatic in the film’s first half and save for a chuckle or two, thanks to Vennela Kishore and Bithri Sathi, Goutham Nanda is quite dull for most part of its runtime. The stakes don’t seem high until the final twist in the tale is revealed, which is, perhaps, the only interesting element in the story.
It’s evident that Sampath Nandi wants to drive home the point that money is the root of all evil and too much money corrupts our minds, but he builds all this up in such a lethargic manner that by the time we sleepwalk towards the climax, what we get in the end is too little and too late.
Gopichand, who played dual roles for the first time in his career, is at his best when he puts forth his grey side in the latter half of the film. He has visibly gotten a stylish makeover; however, the depiction of drugs and alcohol to show how lost he is in his life is kind of problematic. It’s anybody’s guess if this is what existential crisis leads to, but that seems to be the case in Sampath Nandi’s version of a character who has found his perfect life spiral downwards.
It’s even more surprising that Hansika has been cast in a role which requires her to be a lower-middle class girl. There are predictable references to her fair skin, but she looks terribly out of place. Then there’s Catherine Tresa, who barely has a role in the film, save for a scene or two where she is required to be uber-glamorous.Among other characters, Chandramohan and Seetha come up with sincere performances, like they have in a million other films where they played similar roles, whereas Sachin Khedekar, Mukesh Rishi and Nikitin Dheer are relegated to cliched roles.
The only interesting part in the film, so to speak, lies in the idea that even a good man can fall prey to greed, and it takes a great deal of self-realisation to know who you are and do good to the society. If one has to make a seemingly expensive film to drive home this message, then the problem lies in the false hope that you can pour old wine into shiny new bottle and sell it, after adding GST.
The surely looks rich and expensive, but the taste makes you want to reconsider the decision of buying the bottle in the first place. A big thumbs down to Goutham Nanda. It’s a bland film and leaves you uninspired.
