4/5   

Cast: Nandamuri Balakrishna, Lakshmi Rai, Saloni
Music: Kalyani Malik
Director: Parachuri Murali
Producer: ML Padma Kumar Chowdhary
Rating: 3/5

Balakrishna's latest film Adhinayakudu is finally out in theaters. Balakrishna has done triple roles in this film as son, father and grandfather. Let's see how the movie fared..

Story:

Political rivals of Seema leader RamaKrishna (Balakrishna) plans to kill him by hiring a professional killer Bobby (Balakrishna). When Bobby realizes that Ramakrishna is his father he starts protecting him. But there is a dark past that separates the father and son. What is that is revealed in the latter part of the story.

Analysis:

Adhinayakudu has a decent storyline, but the screenplay is dead weak. The director doesn't have any clue about where to start and where to end it. First half starts on an ordinary note and moves ahead with unnecessary scenes in the name of mass entertainment. Opening scene on Brahmanandam is funny but they have dragged it too much.
So much time is wasted on Lakshmi Rai trying to find the bullet mark on Balakrishna's bottom! Those scenes are a total waste of time. Only lively scene in entire first half is the intro scene of Rama Krishna Prasad character. His punch dialogues directed at few politicians will be liked by the fans.

Despite starting off well, second half falters with some badly conceived family scenes. Much hyped 'old getup' of Balakrishna doesn't have much to do. However, this is the best in terms of looks. Father character has few powerful scenes and that should be the saving grace. On a whole, Adhinayakudu lacks the spine and spice to be a powerful mass entertainer. Except for few dialogues nothing stands out.

Performances:

Balakrishna has done decent job in all the three characters. His stylist got only one getup right. Other than the old getup, rest of the two characters irks you with bad makeup. The costumes designed for younger version of Balakrishna were too bad.

Lakshmi Rai was just Okay. Saloni was confined to one scene and song. Jayasudha was good. Pradeep Rawat was usual. Kota Srinivasa Rao and Murali Sharma were shown as mere puppets. Brahmanandam did his best to provide laughs with a weird comedy track. There were too many noted actors in insignificant roles.

Technicalities:

Kalyani Malik's music was below average. Andam Aakumadi and title song were good. Background score was not up to the mark. Editing was too bad. There was no link between many scenes. Cinematography was average. Color grading and CGI was tad ordinary. Production values were fine.

Dialogues written by Paruchuri Murali were good in few scenes. Murali failed as a writer with weak screenplay and poorly conceived scenes. As a director he did an okay job in few scenes. He should have written better screenplay and could have made better use of the three characters. He didn't care about the logic and took too many cinematic liberties.

Verdict: Adhinayakudu is decent film.