Srikanth Review - The Half-Blind and Half-Visionary Story Of A Man Who Never Gave Up

Srikanth Review: There are plenty of Bollywood movies made on blind characters—some remakes, some fiction—but films like Dosti (1964), Anuraag (1972), and Black (2005) are the ones that have stayed in my memory. From Hollywood, I can remember pathbreaking films like A Patch of Blue (1965) and Wait Until Dark (1967). But how many of them were biopics? taking point-to-point from the person's life? Hardly any, or none, maybe. Here comes Tushar Hiranandani's Srikanth, based on the journey of industrialist Srikanth Bolla. It certainly challenges the apologetic gesture of such stories, and it promises a lot of things in the first half, only to go utterly dramatic and soapy in the second half. Srikanth has a good first half that really makes you think, Can we really make such inspiring stories in comedic and humorous fashion? Then, God knows, what happens in the second half that we have to go back to the old formula of "change in personality" followed by "self-realisation.". See, people don't change overnight or within a moment. Years of personality take time to develop a new habit or nature, and it takes time to heal too. Srikanth, being a biopic, fails to understand this simple fact of life, and ruins the entire strong buildup of the first half. Had the second half been equally good and entertaining as the first half, then Srikanth would have ended up as a fine outing.The Bolla family is blessed with a son, quickly named Sri, aka Srikanth, but the next moment, that blessing is turned into a curse. Soon after knowing that the newly born baby is blind, the father wants to bury the infant. However, human emotions stop him and Srikant lives. Sri is bullied by schoolmates but has decided never to run away from problems and trolls and instead fights them. He turns out to be a genius in his studies and is shifted to a special school for high school exams. Young Srikanth (Rajkummar Rao) scores high in 10th grade and wishes to study science at Jr. College. However, it is not possible because the Indian education system doesn't allow visually impaired students to have an education with normal students. Sri and his teacher (Jyothika) decide to fight a legal battle against the system and eventually win it. Sri then goes to Boston for MIT studies and meets the love of his life, Swati (Alaya F). The film then follows the ambitious Sri's journeys into the industrial world.Srikanth has a tight screenplay in the first half, as it compiles different elements like laughter, torture, pain, struggle, and ambitions together very well and aligns them all with straight and clean humour in the right manner. Sri's story starts feeling inspirational and keeps your heart and eyes heavy for an hour or so until the interval line flashes on the screen. The entire mood changes in the second half when the same inspiring Sri is made an egoistic villain. That's very much true, and you can't change the facts, but the film does not explore the conflicts as per demand. The political touch, self-ego, sudden switch in personality, and not recognising your own self are the changes that we see in Srikanth, and none of them are convincing because they all take place within a few minutes. That's not done. Even in the first half, there were a couple of tactical mistakes. In that airport scene, Sri creates a scene to find his seat 18D on the right-hand side, but when he goes into the flight, he is seen sitting on the left-hand side. How? In the courtroom scene, the teacher takes a dig at the professor, saying, "45% result hai aapke college ka?" If that was so, then why the hell did they want admission to such a low scoring college? The second half is filled with many questions, but I'd rather skip discussing them to avoid spoilers. Somehow, the same old finale speech appears to be a fine one, and you have your prolonged happy and inspiring ending.The performance of Rajkummar Rao is praiseworthy. He is finally back in his own standard zone after back-to-back bad choices and mediocre performances. The expressions are a little overdone on a few occasions, but the rest of the time, he makes you believe that he is Sri alright. Don't know why, I never felt like he was playing a blind man. I mean, he was only acting, and very honestly too, but it's really difficult to get that blind man's eyelids thing accurately. He struggles there, and it was a really difficult thing to do, I believe. Alaya F has shared a good chemistry with him, even though the songs only worked as loo-breaks in the film. Jyothika was fairly good, and Sharad Kelkar has done a fine job. Jameel Khan gets the accent and body language right in the role of APJ Abdul Kalam. It was a nice surprise, though. The supporting cast was okay.The film has been shot beautifully by Pratham Mehta, and the production design is pretty good. We have three songs, and none of them work. There should have been one inspirational song that pumps you up. Papa Kehte Hain has that old magic, but let me be frank, it suits better here than QSQT. The editing falls flat in the second half, which makes it lose momentum. Tushar is really good at finding such stories that aren't much known. He did the same thing with Saand Ki Aankh and gave justice to it as per his standards. He did it again with Srikanth, and it almost made me fall for it. He didn't modernise himself enough for this one. The pandemic has changed viewers and their judgement, so I think every film maker has to come up with some extra nice stuff. Using those flashback glimpses and overloud BGM isn't fit for that "extra special" impact. But I can't blame him, man; even a genius like Hirani does the same things in his movies. That notion needs to be destroyed, and I don't see anyone trying to do that in Bollywood nowadays. Srikanth had me in tears at some moments, but I wish it had been so throughout the film. I genuinely had high expectations from it, but maybe the load was too much for Tushar and Sri's story. Yet, kudos to Tushar for some brilliant scenes that will stay with me for some time. Ravi tries to give money to blind beggers; that frame was like "wow." On his right side, there are two blind men who are begging, and on his left hand, there is another blind man, but he is not begging. He is an MIT returnee and a genius. The two sides of the same problem couldn't have been better defined than this. Overall, Srikanth has some highs and some lows, making it a fairly average-to-decent watch. But yes, the potential was much higher.