Film: Badava Rascal

Director: Shankar Guru 

Cast: Dhananjaya, Amrutha Iyengar, Tara Anuradha, Rangayana Raghu, Sparsha Rekha, Nagabhushana NS 

Duration: 133 minutes 

Chitraloka Rating 4/5

Entertainment Guaranteed 

Director Shankar Guru picks up a simple story for his debut, but manages to give the film an entertaining touch with a fresh narrative and loads of praiseworthy sequences. Badava Rascal combines family drama, romance and friendly duels into an interesting symphony of character-driven narrative. 

Shankar, who tries to help an elderly couple from local rowdies is bundled off by them for his impudence to interfere. In their custody, he and Nag, his close friend, turns the table on their kidnappers by simply narrating Shankar's story. Every incident of his life he tells his captors endears him to them and in the end, they are ready to help him in any way.

So instead of a straight leniar narrative, the director employs a different approach of getting the hero to narrate samples of his life. Each of this flashback is an interesting incident about his family life, consisting of his parents and his love affair with the daughter of a rich and powerful woman in power.   

Even though it is the often heard "poor boy meets rich girl" story, the incidents in the form of anecdotes makes for an interesting watch. Each scene therefore is good in itself. The different pieces are held together by the central characters played by Dhananjaya, Nagabhushana, Tara, Rangayana Raghu, Amrutha and Rekha. While all these actors top their game, there is superlative performances from Tara and Dhananjaya. 

Technically, the film is a nice package with visuals made for the big screen, music enhancing the experience and editing removing the rough edges. Badava Rascal is a neatly made commercial film that won't disappoint the regular crowd to the theatres. This is what would fit the definition of a bang for your buck film.

-Review By S Shyam Prasad