Losing the plot

Khushbu is the solitary inspired casting in the movie as the step-mother with a golden heart who loves her step-son more than her own offspring

It broke my heart when Pawan Kalyan’s character makes Murli Sharma run around a swanky office and whips him with a belt in the recently released Agnyaathavaasi (Prince in Exile). In his near two-decade career, Telugu writer-director Trivikram Srinivas never had to resort to banana-peel humour. Even the pratfalls in his earlier movies would always transcend the clichés.

But his latest shows that Srinivas is out of ideas and what’s even more dismaying is that his writing has become downright pedestrian. Here’s a writer who has been telling his audience that there is always an intelligent way to hold a