This is incredulous. In about two hours you are given a dekho on how things
can go wrong, terribly wrong, even when it carries the halloed signature of
master. With embarrassingly poor footfalls this is an exercise that nearly gets
the response it yearns for. It suggests that it is a surrogate product or that
the master sleepwalked through this outing.
The biggest drawback with the film is that it betrays a mind-set that
subconsciously is judgemental about the Western mom Vs Eastern mom stereotype.
Tiring for its stance it is unpretentiously from a pulpit and wafer thin in
content and conviction.
Lucy (Racheal Louise Wise) arrives in India and through an agency identifies
Yashoda (Urmila) to play surrogate mom for her child. Don’t miss the name!! The
mom who bread the Lord. Mom Yashoda has a bro who is not a Kamsa but this time
he is Ganapathi (Sanjeev). All is fine till one day in the course of a medical
test Lucy develops cold feet and just walks out of the deal leaving Yahsoda
with the babe to handle. Cheated of the deal and left stranded the surrogate
mother decides to bring up the new born child as her own. She had willingly
taken up this all, only to fund her little daughter’s surgery. One more, so be
it, she decides. This narration on the banks of the Godavari is punctuated with
a tale in the city dealing with a policeman Saradhi (Bhuvana Chandra) and his
amnesia inflicted wife Anuradha (Balabadrapatruni Ramani).
The child Krishna (Estaban) obviously with his western looks is taken care of
by his mom by default and they bond to perfection. You know sooner or later the
real (?) Mom would return to make her claims and the drama would begin, the
script once again returns to the city and the police man and his amnesia wife.
The only connect is that Saradhi is related to Ganapathi. With Lucy back
claiming the child, Yashoda et al seek protection of sorts at Saradhi’s
residence. The script completely loses any semblance of narrative functioning
at this stage and meanders in to a quasi-comic quasi loony state. Returning to
business after a while it deals with the conflicting claims of the warm caring
loving Indian mom Vs the flashy, cigarette smoking, affluent wealthy seemingly
not caring Western Mom. As the clichés scream their way to the climax you feel
like Get lost Obama rather than Welcome Obama.
The cast at best is theatrical. The only saving grace of credibility comes from
Bhuvana Chandra and Ramani and even here the dubbing for the debutant actress
could have been far better.
The film is finally and aptly summed up with a line from a song from the film
itself which laments: Oh God of God bhale aata aadinavu ra!!
L. Ravichander.