A sad mishmash of other films
Orange
Kannada
Director: Prashant Raj
Cast: Ganesh, Priya Anand, Sadhu Kokila, Avinash, Rangayana Raghu
Rating: 2/5
Prashant Raj's Orange begins like Chennai Express. The heroine is helped onto a running train by the hero. And then begins the chemistry in a flash. However, it appears too ridiculous to be true.
The story of Radha (Priya Anand) and Santosh (Ganesh) next reminds us of Jab We Met. Santosh opts to play the large-hearted. He decides to unite Radha with her lover Prashanth (Harish Raj).
But his mission isn't easy. Because, first he is a thief and secondly Radha's father Huli Veeraiah (Avinash) is a respected and feared village head. Yet he decides to take him on and heads to her village (Chennai Express again!).
Orange has all the ingredients of Prashant's last hit Zoom: a horde of irrelevant characters, a screenplay as inconsistent as mobile networks and ample sexual innuendos. The overall result is a mind-numbing experience.
The film crawls along with a series of predictable events. An action sequence introduces the villain (Devgill), who threatens to kill Huli Veeraiah and calls out for a daring man to stop him. You don't need a huge stretch of imagination to understand that the hero is the saviour here. The writing is marred by such pointless plot points.
Sadhu Kokila makes you laugh, but after a point, his character is an overkill.
The feeling of familiarity continues to exist. A couple of scenes seem borrowed from Priyadarshan's Malayalam flicks Kakakuyil and Chandralekha.
In fact, Prashant's filmmaking in the second half is an ode to Priyadarshan and Sajid Khan as there is more focus on chaos than something sensible and fresh.
If you still manage to sit through Orange it's because of Ganesh. The talented actor, known for his strong dialogue delivery, gets to mouth many punch lines. He is effortless in emotional sequences. But Ganesh's performance comes across as a standalone act as is it doesn't sync with the weak story.
There was a time when a Ganesh film commanded respect. The actor would have fun with his roles and his brilliance would hit the audience at a personal level. But blame his poor selection of scripts or the lack of directors' creativity, one looks at a Ganesh film with apprehension these days. He is an actor hardly explored despite a decade-old presence in the industry.
Prashant's debut Love Guru was a subtle film, but he began running after big numbers at the box office. More than trusting his vision, he was interested in churning out 'fans' delights' and 'family entertainers'.
Zoom, notwithstanding an inept story, crossed 100 days. Sometimes, you cannot question or define a film's success. Prashant will hope for a similar fate with Orange.