The spelling of Inttelligent should have been the first clue for anyone to realise this movie isn’t going to dish out anything that will remotely address even one grey cell in your brain.
VV Vinayak’s stereotypical offering is almost a parody of the Telugu cinema template that has been used for the best part of the 21st century. What’s amusing, and even bemusing, is that the moviemakers take this parody too seriously. It is a story so outdated in its thought process, you can almost see steam engines running in the makers’ brains. No, why insult steam engines really!
An apparently super-smart guy shares a good relationship with his mentor (Nassar), who is killed by the ‘software mafia’. Did you know there was such a thing? Before you go crazy with imagination, it is this group that kills owners of software companies to take over whatever they want!
Nassar’s protégé Dharma Teja (Sai Dharam Tej) sets out to take revenge. He singlehandedly finishes the entire nexus of politicians and goons by hacking them – pun intended – with axes and knives. His team meanwhile targets their bank accounts, emptying them at will.
It is funny how a bunch of jabardasth comedians turn into hackers (one of them pronounces money ‘laundering’ as money-landing, I kid you not). If only it were that easy. Whatever happened to cyber-security laws. Whatever happened to security systems set up by banks. What can be funnier than bank accounts displaying their amount balance with a flash – think trading terminals – and then those amounts going from 8 and 9 digits to 0. Someone tell the moviemakers, hacking into bank accounts isn’t the same as graphics, CGI or photoshopping.
The movie deserves special applause for the role of its heroine (Lavanya Tripathi), who plays Nasser’s daughter. She had to master just one expression for this role – look impressed by the ‘inttelligent’ hero. That and dancing in four or five songs in costumes utterly mismatched with the location.
The movie has a plethora of actors, including Sayaji Shinde, Rahul Dev and Ashish Vidyarthi, all of whom look rather funny mouthing the most cliched dialogues of Telugu cinema. People are killed at will in this movie. A cop is promoted when a video of him illegally thrashing goons goes viral on social media. There is a weird ‘snake’ plotline and a weirder Brahmanandam bit. Whoever thought that these patches would bring in comic relief? They were cringe-worthy and puke-worthy.
At times, you wonder what the point of this movie was. You also wonder why anyone thought of making this movie or participating in it. While it is beyond the scope of this review, one wonders if budgets of this size could have been dedicated to making sensible cinema where the hero doesn’t have to be the ideal son standing with his mom for Harathi and encouraging her to be a singer; an ideal employee protecting his employer; the ideal friend fighting for his rather jobless friends.
It is almost as if someone said let’s make a movie with two keywords – software and hacking (the other meaning of intruding into systems), but the makers have no clue what either is.
Sai Dharam Tej can act, but at the moment this kind of script selection will not take him places, not even when he shakes a leg, rather clumsily, at a remixed version of a yesteryear Chiranjeevi song.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film's producers or any other members of its cast and crew.