Hare Ram - an exhibitor's view

There were two things on my mind that almost prevented me from watching Hare Ram. The first one is Kalyan Ram himself. Unlike many of his generation heroes, I always thought KR lacked the ease in front of camera. His boy next door look is his asset as well as a drawback. The second one is Harshavardhan, the guy that directed Vijayendravarma, who changed his name from Swarna Subbaro. But it is in fact, these two guys that make Hare Ram worth watching.

It is hard to go into the details of the movie without spoiling your experience. Unfortunately, many of the reviews have already done that. About the movie, all I can say is look out for Kalyan Ram, both as an actor and a producer. The movie might have many interesting twists and turns, but the biggest of them all is KR's performance. The scenes with Sudha and Chalapathi Rao at the start of the movie show the ease in his performance. His body language and dialogue delivery have improved a lot. It is always risky to play a double role. Since he is also the producer he must have known this and we can see the difference in both the roles. He put his heart and soul in this movie to come up with an extraordinary performance. This definitely is a turning point film for Kalyan Ram.

The next biggest asset for the movie is the director, Harshavardhan. I still cannot believe it is the same guy that directed Vijayendravarma. The direction is completely different. He seems to have worked hard on each and every scene. The picturization of some of the scenes is awesome. His screenplay is very good especially the flashback episode. The camera angles and close up shots used in some scenes are awesome. He maintained good tempo throughout the film and just when we things are a little slow there is a twist. He handled the climax very well. The last 20 minutes especially is very impressive.

Mickey J Meyer's music is big plus. My personal favorites are Pyar karma seeko na, Laalijo Laalijo and Sariga Padani. On the screen Jairam Jairam song is awesome. Look out for Priyamani in that song ;). The background music is good. Mickey J Meyer's music is different from all the others. His style resembles AR.Rehman, though the orchestration is different and with Hare Ram, he seems like he is here to stay. Mickey J Meyer and Harshavardan, both complemented each other well. Great music and lovely visuals. I cannot stress enough about the rap song Jairam Jairam.

As for the others, Priyamani was a good choice for the role. She was perfect. Just imagine what would have happened to Asadhyudu if she was the heroine in that movie. Some of the episodes involving Brahmanandam and Raghu babu are good and Ali's rain episode clicked well too. Kota as always gives a very good performance. It is sad that he is often ignored.

Overall, this is a very good film to watch and hats off to Kalyan Ram for daring to be different. He did say during the audio function that he will let the audience and fans speak after they watch the movie, and I am pretty sure the talk is unanimous. This movie should also be a good film to watch for all the wannabe directors and producers. But if there are any wannabe producers reading this and looking for a director, feel free to email me (just kidding…but seriously?!).