Gulaebaghavali/Gulebakavali Movie Review

Writer & Direction : Kalyaan
Producer : Kotapadi J. Rajesh
Cast : Prabhu Deva | Hansika Motwani | Revathi
Music : Vivek–Mervin
Cinematography : R. S. Anandakumar
Editor : Vijay Velkutty
Production company : KJR Studios
Running Time : 129 mins

The festival season of Pongal is loaded with many releases and one among them is Prabhu Deva-Hansika Motwani starrer ‘Gulaebaghavali’. The film marks the directorial debut of Kalyaan featuring an ensemble star-cast of Revathi, Anandraj, Madhusudhan Rao, Ramdoss, Sathyan, Naan Kadavul Rajendran, Mansoor Ali Khan, Yogi Babu and many other prominent actors.

Predominantly after glimpsing through the star-cast, one could easily envisage, what’s the film all about? Most of them are completely synonymous to the hilarious quotients. But what’s so much surprising is to see actress Revathi in a humorous role after a long time. Moreover, her characterization looks like the extended version of her role in evergreen comedy caper ‘Arangetra Velai’. The next person instantly scoring brownie points with comedic portions is Naan Kadavul Rajendran, who has fun laced with emotions. Nice to see him after getting stereotypical roles and he travels all throughout the film in major portions. Prabhu Deva deserves special mention for choosing a script that doesn’t project him in a heroic style, but a casual one. It’s nice to see make his comeback through bunch of entertaining movies like Devi and now Gulaebaghavali.

The story is all about a treasure hunt, where groups of people embark on their journey to get the precious diamonds that was buried before years.

Well, as soon as we get to see the genre as ‘Treasure Hunt’, certain things like adventure and maps come to our minds. But here is something completely different as Kalyan takes a simple route sans such elements. Things are so simple and the running length happens to be a major highlight. With an approximate duration around 2 hrs, it keeps us engaged except for couple of songs that look unwanted. But that doesn’t hamper the progression of this film.

Hansika Motwani doesn’t get a much substantial role, but she gets to travel along with the script.  The one liners by Yogi Babu works out the best fun filled moments. The scene where he has to get money in exchange of smuggled deity statues and sees Lollipops, he says, “My Boss has sugar, how do you expect him to eat this?” Such scenes get huge laughter applause in theatres.

Background score is appropriately done for the film and other technical aspects are good though they don’t have scope to score more here.

Overall, Gulaebaghavali is a feel good comedy caper, which can be watched as a good time pass movie for this festive season.