Golconda High School Movie Review

Director : Mohan Krishna Indraganti
Music Director : Kalyani Malik
Producer : Ram Mohan
Starring : Sumanth, Swathi and others

Ditto like the team in its story, the crew of Golconda High School is definitely underrated. It is based on a novel (a rarity in Telugu Cinema), has an ‘award winning’ director, a lead actor whose success is questionable and a bunch of amateur boy actors. Ditto like its story, the group takes help from pros - some important crew members of Magadheera. Ditto like in the story, the release of the film comes at hard times in which 'biggies' failed to connect to their audiences. Question is, can an underrated film like Golconda High School deliver like all the underrated teams in sports movies?

What’s it about: Golconda High School was once a Champion in High School Cricket Tournaments. As times changed its championship status faded. Now board nember Kireet Das (Subba Raju) realizes that the Cricket Ground is too big a space to be wasted on something as useless as sports, and wants to make something out of its real estate value. The School Principal Vishwanath (Tanikella Bharani), an idealist, manages to buy time as he promises to the board that he will somehow try to change the fate of the school. He calls for help from Sampath (Sumanth), a former student and cricket champion, but now a failed businessman! Though reluctant initially, Sampath faces opposition from his students' mindset, from some of their parents who think sports is wasting time and energy, and few teachers who might have never entered any sporting field. However, with support from understanding parents and teachers and with some luck Sampath begins to instill self esteem in the 14 boys. Problem is they have only little time before the school championships start.

What is Good: Introduction of Sumanth is good, while the introduction of children makes you laugh. Almost every kid has been given a sub story and you will relate to either one or the other! Sumanth comes up with a decent performance, and probably he learnt a lesson or two from Nagarjuna – he looks quite young. Almost all the kids are good too. Infact it is the kids whose funny acts keep the movie together.

Subbaraju and Shafi work well as villains who end up being comedians. Thanikella Bharani fits to the T as a principal, while Swathi is cute as the good looking English teacher. The best scenes in the movie are on the cricket ground. In a country where cricket and cricketers are prayed, it doesn’t take too much from anyone to get them sucked into a game. Add drama and good background music to it, they will forget that they are just watching a fictional match.

What is bad: The screenplay is more or less true to the novel The Men Within, except for an additional love story and deleted training episodes. While there can be no complaints about the love story (even though it doesn’t add much to the story), the training scenes remain quite typical. How the kids focus on education, while they practice cricket is left to our assumptions. For a movie that has the slogan aatalu maa hakku it uses one or two weak scenes to explain it. Simply put, anyone would support children while they are winning, but can a cricket coach and his students instill hope in parents when they are losing? The novel had the answers, but the screenplay writer chose to skip them, as a result of which most emotions in the movie remain superficial. That said it is the climax that saves it.

Technical Departments: : The story of almost every 'sports movie' might sound quite similar (underdogs winning in Lagaan, Chakde India, Sye). The difference is made by screenplay with lots of subtexts and technical brilliance. While Golconda High School has the technical expertise the screenplay is somehow lost in the second half till the final game brings it back. Dialogues are witty and entertaining throughout. Art director Ravinder’s work is visible inspite of having very little scope. Kalyani Malik’s background is simply an asset to the movie. K.K.Senthil’s work as expected is good in non-cricketing scenes. During the cricket scenes he sticks to three or four angles leaving the rest to editor. It could be because, he might have wanted to give the audience a TV feel – something they are more familiar with. It adds to the excitement, but probably decreases visual drama. Editing is top notch, and the length of the movie is appreciable too!

Producer Rammohan should be appreciated for showing courage to produce a movie that doesn’t have a typical commercial subject.

Final Point: Golconda High School is like any other sports movie, and works like a low scoring cricket match. What could have been easy to win, is made a hash of, until your favorite team wins in the last ball!