BOTTOM LINE
Sincere But Overdone

RATING
2.25/5

CENSOR
U/A, 2h 7m

What Is the Film About?

Murthy (Ajay Ghosh) is a music shop owner in Vinukonda with a wife and two grown-up kids. The shop is a burden on the family as it yields no financial gains. However, Murthy is passionate about music and doesn’t let it go despite daily taunts from wife.

Murthy meets a young girl, Anjana and they immediately form a bond over their mutual liking for music. She inspired Murthy to become a DJ by following his passion. The movie’s story is about whether Murthy achieved the goal or not.

Performances

Music Shop Murthy is Ajay Ghosh’s one-man show. His journey is the movie and he does a neat job with it. The fact that the character is closer to the actor’s age helps to a large degree.

Ajay Ghosh goes about the proceedings in his usual way. However, at times he feels overdoing the goody-good act a bit. It makes the narrative needlessly syrupy, at times, as a result. He delivers in the emotional scenes and manages to pass off as being an old-age DJ without entirely looking ridiculous. Needless to say, as an actor, it is a memorable role for him as he gets a full-fledged lead part.

Chandini Chowdary plays a youngster who lives on her terms. The accent and body language feel too urban for the backdrop (Vinukonda), leaving that aside she is confident and plays a key role in delivering the message.

For Amani, this is a walk in the park. She has done similar roles in the past and does it again with the same conviction and emotion without losing a beat. Despite nothing unusual, she still stands out for the same reason.

Analysis

Siva Paladugu writes and directs Music Shop Murthy. It is a feel-good underdog story where the protagonist rises and shines against all the odds. The difference here from other such genre films is the lead who is an aged guy.

Right from the opening we know where Music Shop Murthy is headed. The world establishment makes it clear and so does the narrative as it unfolds. And still, we don’t mind it or lose interest, and that’s because of the earnestness with which the proceedings happen.

There is sincerity in Murthy, and although overdone, it works eventually. Similarly, the scenarios and the drama he is entangled in feel relatable. But, more than anything it is the age factor added to the story that makes one root for the character.

Age should not make one lose interest in what they are passionate about – this theme and the situations centred on the DJ aspect help Music Shop Murthy escape being completely outdated.

The moments between Murthy and Anjana (played by Chandini Chowdhary) bring a little bit of freshness to the proceedings. The escalation of drama in the pre-interval and interval as a consequence makes it a decent half overall.

The problem for Music Shop Murthy lies in the second half. Even within a predictable tale, the fresh element seen in the first half is missing here as the narrative ticks all the genre-related clichés.

The feel-good factor turns into a fantasy of sorts, the way things happen to our good-at-heart guy. The struggle doesn’t register and neither does the victory. Things just go through the motions as they must conclude.

It is again at the pre-climax and climax portions when the final drama occurs, there is some emotional connection. The sentiments, however predictable and cliché, and contrived at places, still work and leave us with a sense of fulfilment. The end goal is achieved.

Overall, Music Shop Murthy is a routine, but passable underdog story – the kind which is a harmless watch. The neat message and relatability are an additional bonus. Watch it if you like feel-good dramas even if they follow an utterly clichéd path.

Performances by Others Actors

Music Shop Murthy has a limited but decent casting of recognisable faces. Unfortunately, none barring Dayanandh Reddy have any worthwhile part. Dayanandh, for a change, gets a positive part which comes as a mild surprise as he is used to playing the opposite in such setups. Senior actor Bhanu Chander feels wasted playing an utterly one-dimensional part. The same is the case with Amit Sharma.

Music and Other Departments?

Pavan’s music is lacklustre for a film that is supposed to have music at its heart. The DJ bits are fine, but the regular songs are not up to the mark. The cinematography is below par if one looks at it from the big screen perspective. The editing is alright and so is the writing that works despite the utter routine content it dwells in.

Highlights?

Ajay Ghosh
Message
Few Dialogues (Even Though Predictable)

Drawbacks?

Routineness
Feels Rushed
Contrived Emotions At Places
Lack Of Memorable Music

Did I Enjoy It?

Yes, Few Parts

Will You Recommend It?

Yes, But With Reservations and to those who like underdog winning stories.

Music Shop Murthy Movie Review by M9

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Catherine, Princess of Wales, has issued the first substantial update about her health since revealing in March that she has an undisclosed form of cancer.

The British princess, said Friday in a statement that she has been “blown away” by the messages of support and encouragement she has received since announcing her diagnosis and while she undergoes preventative chemotherapy, which is given after primary treatment and intended to reduce the risk that the cancer will come back.

Catherine, 42, said she’s making “good progress” in her treatment but also asserted that it is “ongoing” for a few more months and that she is “not out of the woods yet.” Neither the palace nor the princess have said what stage of cancer she was diagnosed with, only that it was discovered after she had abdominal surgery in January.

The former Kate Middleton, an upper-middle-class commoner who married into the British royal family in 2011, on Friday also said that she feels well enough to attend 76th birthday festivities for her father-in-law, King Charles III, over the weekend. She plans to take part in “a few public engagements over the summer” as well.

“I am learning how to be patient, especially with uncertainty. Taking each day as it comes, listening to my body, and allowing myself to take this much needed time to heal,” she said.

Read the full message, which was posted Friday on Prince William and Princess Catherine’s official Instagram account, below:

I have been blown away by all the kind messages of support and encouragement over the last couple of months. It really has made the world of difference to William and me and has helped us both through some of the harder times.

I am making good progress, but as anyone going through chemotherapy will know, there are good days and bad days. On those bad days you feel weak, tired and you have to give in to your body resting. But on the good days, when you feel stronger, you want to make the most of feeling well.

My treatment is ongoing and will be for a few more months. On the days I feel well enough, it is a joy to engage with school life, spend personal time on the things that give me energy and positivity, as well as starting to do a little work from home.

I’m looking forward to attending The King’s Birthday Parade this weekend with my family and hope to join a few public engagements over the summer, but equally knowing I am not out of the woods yet.

I am learning how to be patient, especially with uncertainty. Taking each day as it comes, listening to my body, and allowing myself to take this much needed time to heal.

Thank you so much for your continued understanding, and to all of you who have so bravely shared your stories with me.

This story is developing.

Movie review

Before a word of dialogue is spoken in “Tuesday,” a series of magical images introduce Death in the form of a greasy-looking bird as it visits the dying. The beast’s head clamors with their suffering, their terror and bargaining, the sick and the simply worn-out. Young and old, human and animal, they call to him before breathing their last beneath the shadow of his gently raised wing.

In this fantastical first feature from Croatian filmmaker Daina Oniunas-Pusić, striking special effects and a richly textured sound design lend a cosmic chill to a simple story of maternal grief. The mother in question is Zora (a very fine Julia Louis-Dreyfus), so deep in denial about her daughter Tuesday’s terminal illness that she can’t handle being alone with her. Creeping out of the house each morning, pretending to go to work, Zora wanders from coffee shop to park bench, ignoring Tuesday’s calls.

Yet Tuesday (beautifully played by Lola Petticrew) understands. Unable to walk and struggling to breathe, she’s a bright teenager who seems ready when Death appears. Out of sight of her pragmatic nurse (Leah Harvey), Tuesday bonds with Death, requesting time to prepare her mother, and these scenes have a lightness that prevents the film from becoming an extended moan of unrelieved sadness. Like many of us, Death, it turns out, enjoys a joke and the music of Ice Cube. It seems fitting that his taste is vintage.

As voiced, quite wonderfully, by Arinzé Kene, the bird — not the expected raven, but a macaw — is a digital star that the human actors must constantly negotiate with for visual and narrative space. Swelling and shrinking in size, he switches in an instant from cute to monstrous, amusing to terrifying, the voices in his head briefly silenced as he confesses that he hasn’t spoken in 200 years.

“I am filthy,” he growls, coughing up words like hairballs and flapping his blackened wings, as if the darkness of his mission has stained his once-bright feathers with the dirt of the grave. Yet while Tuesday seems perfectly at ease with her grim visitor, Zora responds with an increasingly hysterical campaign to — literally — swallow her greatest fear.

Without much to distract from the three central characters, “Tuesday” can feel overlong and a little claustrophobic. Yet this compassionate fairy tale works because the actors are so in sync and the imagery — as in one shot of the bird curled like an apostrophe in a dead woman’s tear duct — is often magical. Alexis Zabé’s cinematography is both intimate and expansive, reaching beyond the characters’ emotional struggles to show the apocalyptic consequences if Death should be vanquished. The sum is a highly imaginative picture that, while considering one family’s pain, also asks us to ponder the possibility that a life without end means nothing less than a world without a future.