Back Bench Student Review

Behind the Movie BBS: Director Madhura Sreedhar may not have enjoyed a big hit till date but he is known for selecting youthful subjects as seen in 'Sneha Geetham' and 'Its My Love Story.' He is back with Mahat, Pia Bajpai and Archana Kavi for this flick of Back Bench Student. Let us see, what is this all about?

In the Movie BBS: Story begins with Priyanka (Archana Kavi), studying MS in USA middle-drops her education and travels back to Vizag for the sake of love towards her Engineering college-mate Karthik (Mahat). But, the situation is different here because the 16 subjects back-logged Karthik who do not know the value of time and career is now in love with Chaitra (Pia Bajpai). What kind of struggles did Karthik face in one year of time when Priyanka leaves to USA soon after her B.Tech? When and how did Karthik came so close to Chaitra? Whom did Karthik select as his life partner? All these from a part of series of flashbacks and climax respectively. 

Values & Out of the Movie BBS: When targeted mainly at youth and college going audience with this kind of concept and title, one needs to completely make it as an entertaining package. Director Madhura Sreedhar has absolutely fell short on all the departments. Storyline was so thin with no clarity on whether this is a triangular love story or an enlightening subject to failed students. Screenplay is pathetic and so is Direction completely missing on soul. Throughout  runtime, it's hard to find atleast one episode which has enough strength to engage complete attention of audience. Dialogues by Lakshmi Bhupal are also disoriented. Camerawork of Prasad GK and Editing of Dharmendra Kakarala lacked in smartness needed for youthful films. Sunil Kashyap's background musical score is also regular. Production values of pitiful producer MVK Reddy are just average.

Coming to performances, Mahat is anorexic suiting the role of college student. But acting wise, he is a bizarre. He neither has an ease to emote nor a promising voice to fit for the job. Same is the deplorable status of Archana Kavi. It is alone Pia Bajpai who spreaded few magical moments here and there with her screen presence. Among others, entire college batch was unpleasant. Then Ali as Software Company Manager did a decent job while Brahmi as Kareena Kapoor was hopeless. Then comes Sharat Babu, Pragati, Benarjee to fit into small roles. 

The biggest drawback of BBS is inability of Madhura Sreedhar to ripe the drama in his content. As a line, dealing with life of an educationally poor back bench student and the way he succeeded with two girls in life sounds interesting. But, director failed to generate any connectivity with patrons in projecting the same feel in his narration. Lifeless characters come and go performing mechanically before camera like robots. More annoying was no lip sync maintained for all three lead characters.

Youthful stories always demand either situational comedy or seperate tracks to create humor. BBS bores us even in this aspect. God alone knows how Madhura Sreedhar thought of dealing this concect without ample comedy dosage in his script. Finally, compared to uninteresting first half with defunct artists, the boredom in second half was little bearable as Pia and Ali were on screen else this could have been a disastrous disaster.

Though five to six small films are releasing today, due to aggressive promotional strategy adopted...producers can expect minimum openings. Once public talk comes out, booking counters can beat mosquitoes. 

Cinejosh Verdict of the Movie BBS: Benchmark for Unbearable Torture.

                                                   Cinejosh Rating: 2/5

                                                                                      Reviewed by Srivaas