There is nothing to be said against a film as sweet-tempered as this. Nanda Kishore Emani’s Telugu smile-jerker 35 Chinna Katha Kadu is so salubrious in mood, it seems a pity to say anything negative about it. This is one of those rare films where nothing seriously adverse happens to the characters. Except for a maths teacher, there are no unpleasant characters, so the mood of the proceedings remains positive throughout.
So, meet Saraswathi (played by the lovely Nivetha Thomas). She is married to Prasad (Vishwadev Rachakonda), a bus conductor (whom we never see conducting a bus). They have two sons, one of whom, Arun (Arundev Pothula), has a problem with his maths in school. Rather than get a maths tutor, the family gets into a hectic huddle dealing with the boy’s numbers neurosis.
Most of the plot exhausts itself in trying to squeeze every morsel of emotion out of Arun’s struggle to rise above the ‘zero’ tag for his maths. The maths teacher is at first demonized and then shown to be “doing it for the child’s good.”
Sure, making the child stand on the bench with his hands in the air does him a lot of good. The emotions, drama, and treatment of the domesticated heart-tugger seem exceedingly old-fashioned. Luckily, the mood doesn’t swing into a retrograde. As the location is the traditional temple town of Tirupati, the quaint mood fits right in.
Lamentably, the climax of the screenplay where Arun runs away from home, is placed at mid-point. Whatever follows thereafter seems repetitive and sluggish, with the characters buying time rather than getting on with the show.
At one point in the protracted plot, social worker Sharda (Gautami) shows up, oozing more sweetness when the characters are already drowning in it up to their necks.
Sharda is meant to mentor Saraswati when, in fact, Saraswati needs no guidance. As played by Nivetha Thomas, she is strong, sensible, intelligent, and fiercely protective of her children and husband. Come to think of it, this family doesn’t deserve Saraswati.
Neither does this film. 35 Chinna Katha Kadu seems to have been written with the express purpose of demonstrating how clever the screenplay can be while remaining simple, sweet, and basic. We are repeatedly asked to look at Saraswati’s family as illustrative of how inspiring economic modesty can be and that covetousness leads to problems.
This dog-eared idealism can work only in a temple town, and that too if the mother figure is so strong she brooms away all the weak spots in the storytelling.
