Fidaa

Just got to watch this movie lately and I am super impressed by Sai Pallavi's acting and her ability to dub her own dialogs in Telangana Telugu! I really enjoyed every single one of her dialogs in the movie written by Sekhar Kammula. Yep, this movie is a hit because of Sai Pallavi and the rural Telangana settings portrayed by awesome cinematography and those 2 songs (Vacchinde & Hey Pillagada) carried through and through by her great dance moves and subtle expressions. She is the heart and soul of this film.

Now for the story, Sekhar did an excellent job narrating the story in the first half and fell short at the intermission and the second half. He did the difficult job of portraying the love story in great detail which is where most directors typically struggle. I wish he had spent a week more thinking about how he could have created and bridged the rift between the protagonists. A missed opportunity for film to be excellent from where I rated as good today. The scenes and dialogs set in the US could have been smoother - they look broken, hurried and induced with nonsense (Suzy, Ali,dress, etc.) in between. Here is where Sekhar lost the plot. I would have liked more dialogs from Sai Pallavi (Bhanu) here. She was unusually quiet for most of the second half. Raju (Varun's brother) could have had better dialogs. Varun Tej did a good job portraying his character.

Bhanu talks about her love to her friend, her sister, types and erases that on phone, but never overtly expresses her love to Varun throughout the film! If it were not for the super guesswork of Varun (Bhanu never gave any indications post the village life) and convincing by her dad, Bhanu would have ended up marrying that other dude - per the plot. I find it kind of odd that Sekhar missed that for the strong character he is portraying for Bhanu who could have expressed herself to Varun. Again, needs more dialogs for Sai Pallavi!

After all the talk of "half-and-half" (sagam-sagam), the fact that Bhanu is fine with the second option (Varum settling in the village) in the end seems a bit compromised and sudden without setting up relevant scenes and reasons.

All in all, a good refreshing movie. Go watch for Sai Pallavi, her Telangana accent, her dance moves, cinematography, and the monsoon rains in the village!

I liked the first half a lot. It was really fun to watch. Sai Pallavi spreads such energy to the screen whenever she make an appearance. They ruined the movie with a really unnecessary song and a bad plot development. The ending felt rushed and it didn't make sense that the characters would do that. Watch it for Sai Pallavi's performance and one and half hours of fun and sweetness.

A good entertainer worth watching Sai Pallavi dance and her superb performance

A feel good movie with plot relatable to everyone who had love hate relationship ever! Sai Pallavi is simply gorgeous and Varun entertains with his strong emotional quotient! A good watch for good time!

Fida

Yes, I watch Telugu films too

Let's start with the bad stuff first. Cinematography was not good. There were some shots that were actually out of focus, some that had obstacles blocking the actors and some which were just not framed well. Same goes for the editing, it was not good. They wasted so much time on Trivial things. There was one particular shot in a hospital which was four minutes long when it only needed to be thirty seconds. And one important scene which needed to be longer but was cut much too early without the information being registered completely. The hero and the sister of the heroine were baaaaad. It was strained and it was showing. Lastly, the ending was rushed and all the time that they probably should've saved in the movie should've been used for it instead. It was just very abrupt. More of a conclusion would've been great.

Now for the good things. The story he told was told pretty well. The pacing was great, save for the ending. The direction was good enough and the screenplay was pretty good too. The story had no gaping plot holes and the characters were well written. Speaking of which, the heroine is definitely the highlight of the entire film. She was effortless in her acting and a natural. She was so lively and her screen presence was better than probably almost all of the heroines working here right now. She brought the character to life and did it without a single setback. I had no problem in believing anything she said. She was wonderful. I would really love to see more of her. Special mention to her father in the movie who also gave a pretty good performance.

So, a pretty good Telugu film with a pretty good story and one redeeming character/actor for whom you can actually watch the entire film.