Sambar Biryani – Tollywood Stories

When we visit a restaurant, instead of giving us a menu with different kinds of dishes, what if only one option is given and claimed that this satisfies everybody? We do not offer Sambar and Biryani, we offer only Sambar-Biryani.

Is Tollywood offering only one kind of movies to the audience?

Since two years I have been closely observing telugu movies, and unfortunately Tollywood continued to generate flops because of weak stories.

From September 2010, I started watching almost all major telugu releases and all of them had one common problem – ‘Packaging of the movie.’ In an attempt to include commercial elements, the  movie is packaged with comedy, action, tragedy and several other genres in order to make a wholesome family entertainer. Everyone is trying to cook Sambar-Biryani; adding biryani and sambar ingredients into one pot and trying to make a delicious dish.

All movies are aimed at something impossible, trying to package and  blend all genres. In this attempt the key story line is sacrificed. The following are the major pitfalls of this kind of story narration:

1. Increased time line of the story -  The filmmakers are forcing themselves to narrate an epic scale story with all kinds of emotions in a short stipulated time of two and half  hours.
2. Too many subplots – Numerous emotions in the story are generally derived from numerous unconnected or loosely connected subplots, which are resulting in too many twists and surprises. The main action doesn’t kick off until the interval, and the entire knowledge about the movie is shoved into audience in last one hour, which either makes it impossible to comprehend or leads to frustration because of crazy bombardment. The major reason behind many of the flop movies released in recent past is the weak second half.
3. Too many characters - Numerous characters are results of numerous subplots. As the main action starts with the interval bang, there will be very little time to round off the loose open threads planted in the first half, hence many characters and subplots are left hanging which results in leaving the audience unsatisfied at the end.

Although this kind of story telling falls under the classic melodrama mode, the story line tremendously deviates because of unnecessary unconnected packaging of items.

Of course like anything else, exceptions always exist. Every year we see at least one movie which becomes a hit despite this kind of packaging, and obviously they are outliers.

How wonderful it will be if Tollywood can return back to good old days when either they made Biryani or Sambar but not the fusion.