It has been amply established in most Telugu movies of the last decade that we don't understand the United States of America, Americans, or the way things operate in that country. Nevertheless, stubborn filmmakers keep superimposing the actual America with their impression of the land, to make wannabe heist movies with half-baked scripts, embarrassingly comical English from out-of-place Telugu actors, and white actors who you know are doing their bit for a few extra dollars.
Take a foreign gangster, a couple actors with a what-am-I-doing-here expressions and funky narration that sounds as if some sinister and mind-blowing event is unravelling - and you have Nuvvu Thopu Raa, a movie that is so pretentious, it can provide fodder for a dozen stand-up comedy acts.
Suri (Sudhakar Komakula) is failing in his professional and his love life. He doesn’t completes his BTech, doesn't have a job, and can’t seem to speak properly to his own mother. Yet, he has the audacity to sing a woman-are-responsible-for-everything-bad song, crib to his girlfriend about it and ask her to leave.
One day, an event organiser sees him playing teen maar well and sponsors a trip to the US for him, so he can participate in a Telangana cultural festival being held in the Bay Area. But he argues with the organisers and somehow ends up stuck in the US. Enter expectations of a hard-nosed, street smart immigrant who finds his way back home. But after Suri finds out his mother has a kidney issue, those expectations crash. Suri's master plan to make his mother happy (now that he realises how awesome she is after he has to clean the floors at a restaurant for a whole day) is to enroll in college (basically, buy his way into it), get a Green Card (marry a US citizen) and then get a job. Mom's kidney issue can wait till that plan is implemented.
Enter Varun Sandesh, a Telugu friend with an American accent so heavy, you will want to listen to Carnatic music for an hour just to wash that garbage out of your ears. No one really knows exactly what his role in the movie is supposed to be, but he mostly hangs out with Suri, who has given himself 50 days to earn the $7,000 he needs to pay a sex worker to marry him. This is despite a wonderful Indian girl who is interested in marrying him, but he doesn't want to play with her emotions. Sound like a morally-correct decision? This is the same guy who threatens the boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend with a gun. So, amidst all these mercurial contradictions, Suri comes up with another master plan to get the money. He orchestrates a comical shootout with gangsters, so he can steal their drugs and sell them. His idea for selling the meth he has stolen? Carry all of it in a bag and walk from door to door in an area infested with criminals and drug lords. He reaches the house of another peculiar gangster, Azhar, once his mentor. There while making a deal, he sees a bunch of innocent workers being forced to pack the meth and he has a change of heart. He puts his life at risk and decides to save them. His idea of saving them? Throw a stone at the drug lord, get hold of the gun, make the people run for their lives. He takes half an hour to come up with the plan, while the drug lord and his heavily-armed men wait outside the small room he is trapped in, along with those workers. Enter headache.
Nuvvu Thopu Raa has about four monologues on India and Telugu people, about a 100 lines where the hero talks about Saroor Nagar, about 25 pretentious (not to mention outright comical) scenes with Americanised Telugu, wannabe-cool but very funny gangster scenes and a love story that is as deep as the interaction between a cashier and customer at a supermarket.
The only good part about this movie is its music, a collaboration which amongst others includes Grammy winner Deepak Pallikonda. At times, it is so wonderful, you wonder why such a good song has been wasted in a story that is miles away from being a good romantic tale. Nuvvu Thopu Raa pretends to be an underdog story about a man who reaches America, gets stuck their and then fights to get back home. But, as cool as that sounds, it is more the story of a man who has no clue what he is doing, wants to act smart and then does hilariously stupid things. And still stumbles his way to a happy ending.
Harinath Babu, the director, is possibly the only person who could tell you how the original image had felt in his head because what turns up on the screen is just a lot of gibberish that is difficult to sit through.