Comedy and romantic comedy is thriving in Telugu cinema. It’s not the case with other industries of similar size. This year, cinema theatres briefly opened before the second wave of the pandemic in India and a small film that no one saw coming made a huge splash. It became one of the biggest hits critically and commercially. Maybe it was the timing, maybe it was the nature of the film or the absolute abandon with which it was made, the audiences couldn’t have enough of it. It is indeed Anudeep KV’s Jathi Ratnalu, a comedy that pushes the genre in every fashion, may it be the dark part of it or the silly. Jathi Ratnalu is streaming on Amazon Prime.
The film stars Naveen Polishetty, Rahul Ramakrishna, Priyadarshi, Faria Abdullah, Murli Sharma et al. Aditya and Anantha are joined by writer, director, actor Rahul Ravindran. Rahul made one of the best romantic comedies in recent times – Chi La Sow – for which he won the National Award for Best Original Screenplay. We talked about our favorite sequences from the film, why comedy and romcom are doing great in Telugu cinema, Naveen’s career arc so far, whether the film translates well for non-Telugu audiences and more.
Listen on.
The climax video ‘twist’ was based on this IRL incident: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/tdp-mla-who-claims-to-have-done-bcom-physics-has-studied-till-class-10/story-PAY81F1iUQXNuq9TDZIzNN.html
This is very much part of the ‘social commentary’ aspect of the filem which you had discussed.