July 10, 2009 Y. Sunita Chowdary
Cast: Venu, Kamalini Mukherjee, Krishna Bhagawan, Jayalalitha, Sana, Geetanjali, Jeeva and others.
Banner: Maharshi Cinema.
Music: Chakri.
Producer: Valluripalli Ramesh.
Presenter: Anandi Art Creations.
Story, Screenplay and Director: Vamshi.
Release Date: July 10, 2009.
Venu is always seen as smiling, flashing his teeth, sunny, happy in all his films. Here he not only looks dull, his work listless, and the downcast mood pervades throughout the film. Despite everything, Gopi Gopika Godavari gives you a feeling that something is amiss.
Gopi (Venu) works for an orchestra group and Gopika is a doctor who runs a mobile clinic on a launch. A wrong connection on the phone, and they get talking to each other, exchange gifts and love blossoms between the strangers. Gopika's mother Jayalalitha wants her to marry another doctor Shyam Prasad but she insists on marrying Gopi. The duo plan to meet but that doesn't materialize. Gopi is on an impromptu visit to see Gopika but he meets with an accident and his memory breaks down but eventually lands up on her mobile clinic and the lady nurses him back to health. He is named Prabhu. Gopika continues her effort to trace him but gives up when she learns that Gopi is dead. She even complies with her mother's request and get's into the bridal attire to take vows with Shyam. Just then it's revealed that Prabhu is Gopi and what follows rest is everyone's guess.
Gopi Gopika Godavari is a loosely constructed version of Charles Chaplin's "Modern Times". Major similarities are the waterfront romance, Venu bringing a bouquet for Kamalini and mistakenly picking up a communist flag when he bumps into the protestors, he becoming an amnesiac.
Vamshi provides large dose of sentiment towards the end when Gopi's mother turns blind and she is incapable of recognizing her son who is sleeping on her lap and suffers from memory loss. Jayalalitha sparkles as the anguished, worried mother who has been cheated once, is clueless as to why her educated daughter is head over heels in love with a stranger.
She even asks her, "You ask a patient hundred questions before prescribing medicines, how could you take an insane decision when it comes to your life partner?" Her question becomes the only intelligent dialogue in the film.
There are just sweeping shots of people attending on patients and most of the time the heroine is shown as talking over the phone to her lover or pining for him. The film is slow and stretchy but one can watch it for the slightly different plot and nice music.
We have seen many waterfront stories like Godavari onscreen but this adult romance on the banks of Godavari has no zest or zing. In the process of uniting Gopi and Gopika, the director has completely ignored the beautiful Godavari. The lead actors work is subdued, dull. Comedy borders on double entendre and finally the film is just average and far better than the films that came out in the recent past.
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