Watch TrailerKushi Review: Multilingual Kushi, helmed by Shiva Nirvana, rests on an interesting concept, though I have seen films on it years ago. Kushi is basically a debate on superstition versus logic and believers versus non-believers. But sadly, the way the plot is executed and scripted is a shame, and what a waste of what could have been a gripping narrative. Often preachy and verbose, the movie goes against the very concept of cinema. I agree that Indian cinema grew out of drama (while Western films pegged on photography to move ahead into motion and movement), but incredible as it may sound that after a hundred years we should still be making pictures that talk more and act less.
Viplav (chocolate hero Vijay Deverakonda) joins a telecom company in Chennai and pleads with his boss to post him elsewhere. He goes to Kashmir (we see similarities between Kashmir Ki Kali and Roja), where he promptly falls in love with Aaradhya (Samantha Ruth Prabhu). She pretends to be a Muslim, and tries to ward off the Brahmin boy (Viplav of course). But he is not going to take a no, and the way he woos her is juvenile, to say the least ( resembling the 1960s Bollywood pictures). And then, she gives in – and they are soon madly in love with each other.
And then, Kushi turns into gham (sorrow), and we see a Romeo and Juliet being played all over again – at least the initial scenes. The couples’ fathers are arch enemies, because one believes in science and logic and the other in god and religion. While Aaradhya’s father, Chandrangam Srinivasa Rao (Murali Sharma) living with his family in the temple town of Tiruchendur in Tamil Nadu staunchly believes in the Almighty, the boy’s father, Lenin Sathya (Sachin Khedekar), pooh-poohs all this as rubbish. He is a man of reason, and feels that what the other man has is nothing but blind faith.
In a television debate, with the two men in a heated debate nearly coming to blows, Lenin rubbishes the contention that Chandrangam propagates: Do not eat or bathe during a lunar eclipse.
Finally, when the lovers decide to marry come what may, the fathers let them go but with a dark prediction. Their marriage would end in six months, but Viplav and Aaradhya promise themselves to prove their families wrong. “ We will prove that we are the happiest couple in the world”, they smile.
The movie has little to offer in the performance zone, except Sharma does give a power-packed piece of acting as the man who looks beyond science and believes that god does exist. The other characters seem jaded and rather unidimensional, and Samantha as well as Vijay offer very little to elevate a plot that held promise.
