Rey Telugu Movie Review

Rey is a film without of a ray of hope or sanity. It is a celluloid tribute to nepotism and the theory that you can indulge as much as you want if you only you were part of a big time family in the fraternity and money sacks. The sacks suck. This is obnoxious celebration of an idea based on gender jokes and stances that went out of fashion over a few decades ago. In one of the moments of the film the heroine reacts to the wooing of the hero with a single word which is actually appropriate for the entire 168 minutes of the film: disgusting. The first problem with the film is about the Editor (K. Venkateshwar Rao) who permits reels and reels of inanities to muster space and time in the narrative. He could have unhesitatingly removed half of the film on the ground of irrelevance or lack of basic standards of storytelling. The whole idea of encouraging eve teasing and casual references to rape in the context of our times is repulsive and retrograde and reflect a total lack of sensitivity. This is surely not entertainment. The attitude of celebrating aggressive love by permitting the hero to get away with anything with the heroine since he has a bunch of clowns for friends and has muscle to extinguish the worse baddies is not justification. This celeb of the stereo type macho image was all very fine when Shanker Jaikishan backed up the dancing Shammi Kapoor in the 60s. Even when the Mithun Bappi Lahri combo tried it out in the 80s it was summarily rejected. To revisit such a premise at a time when rape is a serious social concern in the country is not just abject irresponsibility but a very very poor choice at the very start-point of the film.
Jenna (Shradha Das) is a musical diva gone wrong. She spends all of her time killing her competitors ruthlessly and maintaining a harem of worthless goons to execute her vile plans to stay of the top of some annual musical event in the US of A. Away in the Caribbean you have Rock (Sai Dharam Tej) who is a street urchin who treats his parents like a shabby doormat – with Naresh and Hema playing the role that Chandramohan and Lakshmi have been doing for centuries. Alongside is the story of how Jeena’s first victim Sandy (Farhad Shahanawaz) was killed and his sibling Amrutha (Sayami Kher) wants to fulfil his dream of making it to the Grammy of the film. After having made a wild card entry to the finals they are more into a bout of violence in the scale of a local war. Yes you have guessed it right that the group is Amrutha and Rock and they rock. At the competition Jena delivers her punch and gets 100% of the votes. So it’s a foregone conclusion that she is the winner, but wait, a few mayhem filled moments of music later it the Rocky group that wins with 200%. That is the level of the film’s intelligence.
The entire film is dedicated to ogling by sex starved guys for a while in the Caribbean islands and for a while in USA. Then there is song after song after song all loud, all without with a pretension of melody totally dedicated to rhythm which goes wrong and dollops of purposeless violence. The Caribbean police are treated with the same contempt that the West Indies bowlers were in recent times. The American police are treated as if they are non-existent. The filmmaker’s idea of romance is pathologically sexist and unacceptable to the times in which it is rendered. His ideas have outlived their shelf life. This is arguably the most violent musical you would have seen – that is if you get to the theatre and last the reels. The music (Chakri) is a rehash of the Bappi Lahri of the Disco Dancer times. If this is his last work than it is a tragic reflection of what the Bard said: the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.
Rey has stay away not only written all over but even loudly stated in every moment of the tedious 168 minutes imprisonment at the theatre.

Rating: 1/2 Star
_ : The film
+ : the interval.

L. Ravichander.