Shiva (Ram) is a happy go lucky guy, who successfully unites 111 lovers and believes in a motto “Manaku nache ammayi kosam wait chesyyali, vachaka fight cheyyali”. That’s when he meets Tanuja (Raashi Khanna) in a strange situation and falls in love. Abhi (Abhimanyu Singh) is a young business magnet who is in look out for Shiva with the help of Rocky (Srinivas Reddy). Things turn around, when Abhi escapes with Tanuja and Shiva gets kidnapped by Bhoj Reddy’s (Vineet Kumar). The rest of the story is all about how Shiva wins back his lady love and clears the real purpose behind helping the young lovers.
Ram and “Jil” fame Raashi Khanna are apt choices for the lead role, but director completely failed to lead the characters from the front. The typical happy go lucky guy characterization is a tailor made role for “Energetic Star” Ram. But his acting falter at many places. And he needs to extra care on his selection of scripts as they are getting too similar and silly with every film. Similarly Raashi Khanna’s dialogue delivery or histrionics are extremely poor. Vineet Kumar as Villainous Bhoj Reddy seems to be getting typecast in such roles. Abhimanyu Singh does justice to his role. Brahmanandam, Prabhas Seenu, Srinivas Reddy and Sapthagiri try to test our patience with their forced comedy. Fish venkat comedy work in parts. Posani Krishna Murali characterization is more like an extended version of Shayaji Shinde’s character in Kick.
The storyline of “Shivam” is too circuitous. And the gambits employed are way to exaggerated and inspired from films like Kick, Happy, Ready, Dammu, Athanokkade, Darling..etc. And the climax is real mess. If there’s something called credibility that film needs or to have, “Shivam” scores a real low. It rakishly heartless and often quite pathetically mindless of how silly it is. Though it doesn’t seem new or different, there’s nothing wrong with the storyline. It could have been interesting if it had been treated differently. Both script and the direction have gone wrong in this film. The script writer/director Srinivas Reddy (protégé of Surrender Reddy) seems to have lost his moorages and gone adrift with “Shivam”. The narrative even makes it direful.
Shivam, that claims to be a romantic entertainer, is neither romantic nor entertaining or is it remotely comic. Rather this product from debutant Srinivas Reddy is simply dispirited. Not even one song, character or scene in the film that comes out good. Director completely fails to lead his cast with some good characterization. The film even has some continuity issues which becomes very glaring and obvious and also quite a few dubbing errors.
The cinematography by Rasool Ellore is good. The story clocks more than 165 minutes with too many lags in the latter half, due to lack of smartness in the editing table (“Kerintha” Madhoo). Dialogues by Kishore Tirumala (directing Ram’s Harikatha) work in parts. Dialogues like, “Simple gaa solve ayyedaaniki kottukune daakaa enduku”, “Nuvu Evvaro Chepthe guruthochinapudala kodutha, Nenu evvaro thelusu koni vasthe guruthundi poyela kodutha”, “Manaku naache ammayi kosam wait cheyyali, vachaka fight cheyyali” are good and in sync with the situations. Music by Devi Sri Prasad is very mediocre and his tunes remind us of few recent Telugu hits. Background Score and Fights in the film are not upto the mark. Production values of “Sri Sravanthi Movies” are grand.
Shivam is one of those films that make you pull your hair out and make you regret your decision to watch it. The main flaw with the film is that though things go snail paced and predictable till interval, it turns into a mess in the latter half. On the whole, Shivam is all asinine scrap that lacks any content or soul. An example of barefacedly awful screenwriting saddled with coincidence, this is a silly, commercial melodrama that tests your patience to the fullest.
