You know those IKEA-style ready to assemble furniture products? You get the assembly line parts in a box and you bring them home, get the satisfaction of some DIY and then lo and behold, your brand new furniture piece is ready. Tenali Ramakrishna is similar. There are some usual cinematic tropes you can put together, add the routine twist, the mandatory casually sexist jokes, a couple of punch dialogues, two fights, four songs, and there you go, you have a new movie.
Tenali (Sundeep Kishan) is a lawyer who makes money through out-of-court settlements, infuriating his dad who wants him to win cases and get a good name. He is in love with a naive woman, Rukmini (yep, Tenali actually tells her that she is not smart, she's a nice person). Hansika Motwani plays this role and is almost sidelined for most of the second half except for a scene where she displays her stupidity by unintentionally revealing Tenali's master-plan to her dad Chakravarthy (Murli Sharma), an unethical criminal lawyer. So irrelevant is her role that until she comes back in the behind-the-scenes bits during the end titles, you forget she even existed in the movie.
The plot revolves around Tenali saving a philanthropist Varalaxmi (Varalaxmi Sarathkumar) from a crime he thinks she didn't commit but got entangled in. The second half is about Tenali realising what's amiss and trying to wrong a right. Nageswara Reddy's movie pretends to be about law, but is absolute lawless, pun intended. The focus is all on the comedic bits which involve Sapthagiri, Vennela Kishore, Posani Murali and a bunch of usual comedians. It is kitschy to say the least - tasteless mostly, and at times, in really bad taste.
Put that crassness aside, and Varalaxmi brings some villainy into the movie and in a better script would have been menacing with her cold-eyed stare and non-Telugu accent. But, in this movie, it was a lost effort, largely owing to the screenplay barely giving her anything to do in the second half except playing on her villainy. It is the usual case of black and white, where once we know who is the antagonist, the antagonist is let loose, randomly murdering and threatening people, and going over the top in every scene.
The movie could have been an interesting courtroom drama but that was never its purpose to start with. The pivotal murder case itself is pretty ridiculous and poorly thought out. Introducing comedy even in the courtroom using the trope of false witnesses barely helps the audience invest in anything at all. Yes, sometimes the jokes are funny but at most times they are cringe-worthy and slapstick.
The music, romantic sub-plot and camera work are functional at most, nothing standing out really in any way. Tenali Ramakrishna BA BL though does the audience one favor - it is short, so you need not really fight your hunger to buy overpriced popcorn at the theatres. One imagines that the two-minute brainstorming session for the film went something like this: 'Hey remember this movie where the hero helps someone and that someone is not the right person and then the hero uses all his brain to prove he is not such an idiot after all? Let's remake that movie, and make the hero a lawyer. That will be a new movie, isn't it?'
In the end, it's just crass, farcical comedy parading as a courtroom drama.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the series/film. TNM Editorial is independent of any business relationship the organisation may have with producers or any other members of its cast or crew.