Venkatesh in a role contrived to woo the frontbencher’s scores with his all round performance of fighting, dancing, romancing, doing comedy and shedding tears. Venky is the pivot around which the film moves, as he navigates and negotiates the crests and troughs in this grossly uneven film with felicity. The physical energy he imparts to the role has to be seen to be believed.

The story and presentation is of dinosaur age when there were hysterical villains (Sayaji Shinde and Pradeep Rawat), loving and devoted sister (Uma), and sacrificing mom (Jayabharathi), ungrateful brothers (Rajiv Kanikala), secretary as item girl (Charmee) and a nice girlfriend (Nayantara).

Add comedy track of Venu Madhav and Telengana Sakunthala, Sunil the conscience keeper of the villain, hit numbers of Ramana Gogula picturised in great exotic foreign locations, plus mandatory fight scenes and some EFX (Cartoon of Venu and Sakunthala like Tom & Jerry). It all adds up to mass masala double decker entertainment for the common man.

Lakshmi Narayan (Venkatesh) the big Annai is a family man who mouths dialogues like –“When money is lost, something is lost. When character is lost everything is lost”. He fights like Arnold Schwaffner and at the same time he is a romantic hero when it comes to song ‘n’dance numbers. The life and times of Lakshmi is chronicled in the film. The tagline of the film is told by Charmee- “Wow, he is my hero! “.

Charmee goes to office in micro minis and high heels providing oomph as she sinks her nails into the role with aplomb and is rocking in songs. Nayantara in a small role shines. The villain brigade are wasted as they just shriek and finally gets burnt in the end!

Verdict: Time Pass