Sreekaram

Story: Karthik (Sharwanand) hails from Rayalaseema and is doing well in his career as a project lead in an IT company. Wanting to pursue the family’s vocation of farming, he quits his job and returns back to his village. Will he be able to bring back lost glory to the profession?

Review: A young, talented, heroic urban man turning messiah for villagers is a tale Tollywood has often told. Sreekaram too banks on a similar idea, where the young one has an urban vision for an age old profession. But is that enough to make this tale an engaging one?

Karthik is a software engineer focused on his career. In his downtime, he also motivates his colleagues, preaches to his boss and does everything a gentleman like him is meant to do in a film like this one. Nevertheless, he bags the best employee of the year award but let’s go of a golden opportunity because he sees farmers turn to daily-wage to make ends meet. While it might be a convincing enough reason, the conviction is lacking when it comes to this track. He soon returns to his village, much to his father Keshavulu’s (Rao Ramesh) chagrin in an attempt to save the day. Also thrown into the mix is Priyanka Mohan. But like every badly written female character in Tollywood, all she does is fawn over him or dance.

Thankfully, the second half of the film is where the heart lies. It’s not easy to make agriculture profitable in areas like Rayalaseema but Karthik has a plan. While director Kishore Reddy interestingly ideates the concept of modern joint farming, he fails to address some basic realities. No matter how advanced a farming technique is, reality is quire otherwise. Kishore does deserve applauds for focusing a film on the farmers of this country but would’ve earned more respect if he focused on issues like farmer subsidies and minimum support price too. By the end of the film, a lot of ground realities are left unaddressed and institutions are left unquestioned. And it’s because of this that Sreekaram is a good film but it fails to be a great one. The film shines in the climax and Burra Sai Madhav proves yet again that his writing can pour life into emotional scenes. Mickey J Meyer’s music is decent.

Sharwanand excels at roles like these and he once again manages to deliver a good performance. Rao Ramesh also delivers, no surprise there. Sai Kumar is good but his role could’ve been fleshed out better. Priyanka looks beautiful, but seems wasted in a film like this.

Sreekaram is an honest attempt to shine light on the plight of the farmers in our country and to show the future generation how it can be a viable profession. Take your family along if you’re a sucker for such dramas.