Genre-crossing is a very new concept in Telugu cinema. The most genre-crossing Telugu cinema has seen is of Comedy and Horror. Awe, here tries to achieve, the un-achievable, the mix of all genres possible. But the basic premise of genre crossing should be one story that crosses over to multiple genres. Awe does not take that route. Instead it takes the route of Anthology where in you show multiple short stories and then interlink them somewhere in the story. And then there is M Night Shyamalan kind of genre where your movie tone completely changes with a shocking twist in the climax. Finally there are movies Predestination and Identity. Awe is an inefficient mix of all of these- Genre-Crossing, Anthology, climax shocking twist, movies Predestination and Identity.
It comes across as a deliberate attempt to be different than different with a purpose. The movie lacks a voice. Instead it has a monotonal, in your face, "Look how different I am" grin on it's face. But the production, art work, camera work, acting and music give in their best for the movie. The movie look is designed to be so outlandish, be it the hair-dos, the sets, the colors used and the costumes etc, to suit the theme of Awe. All the actors in the movie are talented and they seem under-utilized with wafer thin characterizations.
Awe is a nice concept for a short film, the awe-worthy. But for a full feature length, it is firstly an experiment and secondly it needed able writing. Thanks to the charm of Nani, the producer, audience accepted the first one but the writing team were not successful in second one. The humor-induced dialogues in Nithya Menen thread do not do justice to the stigma around that topic. It needed more enlightening. Same with Eesha's thread. Avasarala thread is good but it looks straight out of Predestination movie. Darshi's thread starts off good, thanks to Ravi Teja, Nani and Darshi but soon runs out of fizz. Kajal and Regina threads are dragged out. Regina's is the one that would test your patience, even with Regina giving her best. Murali Sharma thread could have been avoided. Also the movie lacks the emotional connect through out and the conviction required for the convincing climax.
They say "end justifies the means". But in Awe, the means/proceedings, though very hatke(different), are so lethargic and dragged out that the shocking end (though seems inspired from movie Identity) fails to justify the agony of the audience. The amount of love Telugu audience have for Nani should dictate this movie's fate.
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