Encounter Shankar

Synopsis : An orphan, Shankar (Mahesh Babu) is adopted by a cop Raja (Rajendra Prasad). When Raja’s son accidentally causes the death of a boy, Shankar owns up the crime and lands in juvenile prison. He grows up to become a trigger-happy encounter specialist and is posted to Bokkapatnam, ruled by a cruel don, Damodar (Sonu Sood) with whom Shankar has a personal score to settle.

Movie Review: Around the time the movie was announced speculation was abuzz that the film was going to be a sequel to Dookudu. It seems more like a remake with a much louder Mahesh Babu, more banal jokes, and a few superficial twists in the screenplay. Ofcourse Tamannah replaces Kajal. Prakash Raj, along with a handful of character artistes from the original – we’ll call it that for the lack of a better analogy – are missing. In operating system parlance it’s what they’d call Dookudu 2.0 version. We aren’t sure if this rehashed version is an improvement over the old one though.

For starters all the plot markers are the same. There’s the father sentiment, revenge track, Brahamanandam and MS Narayana doing their thing. The original was about a cop’s quest to avenge the villains responsible for his dad slipping into a comatose state. Here, the villain causes the suicide of the genetic son of his adopted father which is also revealed in a flashback episode like before…err always rather.

How Brahmanandam gets fooled by Mahesh in what was a smart spin off on a reality TV show was a huge draw last time around. But this time, Brahmi plays a Delhi-based middleman who gets played into getting Damodar to turn against his partners in crime. However, Brahmanadam totally rocked the bit in which he imitates the dance moves of Allu Arjun, Mahesh Babu, Ram Charan NTR Jr to name a few in what is a throwback to MS Naarayana’s hilarious imitation of iconic scenes from Magadheera, Robot and Simha.

MS Narayana plays a lawyer who goes by the name Database Daanayya because he’s got all the information about anyone under the earth. There is an episode where Mahesh plays a quiz master with Posani Krishna Murali, Raghu Babu and Pruthvi; and that was one of the funnier moments in the movie. Well, Mahesh was loudest of the lot as he pulled out all the stops and even overshadowed the redoubtable Posani in terms of decibel level and histrionics. This must easily be the most over-the-top comic act by Mahesh, but it lacked some of the finesse of a Khaleja and 1 Nenokkadine. Also, it was all a little too one-dimensional with expressions and dialogue delivery. Tamannaah lights up the screen with her presence in the little time she gets even though she has very little do in terms of acting.

There are surfeits of slapstick moments, it’s just that the situations aren’t as funny and the smarts in the gags are amiss more often than not. The production values barring Shruti Haasan’s sexy act in the item number aren’t exactly breathtaking and the songs baring Bhel Puri and the title track look better than they sound. There’s fun to be had off course but perhaps the end product is more slapstick than funny.