Challenge- Chiru’s best movie.
Chiranjeevi has been my first hero. when i was like 7 or 8 years I thought hero is someone like chiranjeevi and as grew older i started finding out about him the good work he’s done through blood bank and eye bank. As we entered into the new millenium number of fans of chiranjeevi increased by huge numbers and I feel he is trapped into this whole world of god like thing where many fans worship him. which makes him do stupid movies like stalin,mrugaraju and other shitty movies that he’s doing for past few years. But chiranjeevi is one of the best actors in India along with Kamal Hassan, Amitab bachhan and Superstar Rajini. All these great actors are made to do movies that are safe bet for producers cause of fans.Before chiru turned into this god like figure he did a movie called “Challenge” which has been made from novel by “Yandamuri Veerendranath” called “Dabu-Dabu” (”Money-Money”) Yeah it might be strange but there are movies made from novels in telugu too. There was an era when the combination of Kondandarami Reddy-chiru-Yandamuri-Ilayaraja gave continues hits and gr8 movies to telugu industry. This movie was made during that golden era.
Its a story about Gandhi(chiru) challenging one of big industrialists Ram Mohan Rao(Rao gopal rao) in Vizag that earning money is no big deal anyone can do it during interview held by Ram Mohan Rao. Gandhi realizes that this interview its nuthing but joke on poor youth and game that he is been playing. Then Ram Mohan Rao Challenges Gandhi that if he can make 50 lakhs in 5 years he would marry his daughter Haarika(vijaya shanti) with gandhi. The Movie starts with gandhi’s mother in hosptial and he is tries hard to buy medicines to her but fails. so he steals them in desperate attempt to save his mother. but its too late she is already dead by the time he gets to hospital. He Dosent have enough money to bury his mother and to worse matters the wardboy at hospital demands Rs 500 from gandhi to protect his mothers corpse from decaying. He impresses Harika who is in hospital to see her mother with his mathematics and receives Rs 500 but the wardboy takes it from him and finally he buries his mother. Frustrated with his life gandhi wanders allround vizag on one such occasion he meets Lakshmi(Suhasini Mani ratnam) they both see an ad for a job opening and gandhi realizes that this ad is nothing but trick played by the owner of that company on poor people. Thats when the argument b/w Ram Mohan Rao and Gandhi Happens. What happens next is the journey taken by Gandhi and Lakshmi together in earning Rs 50 Lakhs and how he overcomes all troubles and win the challenge.
It is a typical David vs Goliath story but the way yandmoori adpoted it to the telugu audiences is great. Chiranjeevi is great as Gandhi, I feel this is his best performance with Chanti Abbai,Rudraveena, Abhilasha and Aradhana. Rao Gopal Rao was great actor in 70’s and 80’s he dosent have any macho look, he is like typical andhraite but he plays villan role to best. Kota Srinivas Rao is the only actor in telugu industry who can act like Rao Gopal Rao and these two people are from theater and they tasted success in their late 40’s. Music by Ilayaraja is another assest to this movie. Suhasini Mani Ratnam did very good job as Lakshmi she was perfect as girl next door.I Think telugu cinema golden era was untill 1994 or early 90’s after that high percent of movies are revenge based thats I feel bad that now a days movies like desamuduru are considered hits. Thank god that shekar kammula came to telugu industry breath of fresh air.
One of my fav movies in telugu.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Remember watching this movie on DD. Chiru has given one of his best performance here. If you remember the scene where he is wandering the streets of Vizag and the sun beats on him….though this shot has been shown in many other movies, done to death..but this was the first time i was watching it and…ermm i tried to enact every time i went out in the summer…
Yep Chantabbayi….Classic comedy by chiru….I guess no one can ever forget the ultimate mimicry of Charlie Chaplin by Chiru in the song ” Atlanti itlanti..”. Though many may argue…the pairing of Chiru and Suhasini was the best….No Raj Kapoor- Nargis, no SRK- Kajol, Rishi-Neetu. The only lead pair that i think can come close is Guru Dutt- Waheeda Rehman.
Thnaks for this Varun…Did you miss Apadabhandavudu?
yeah i forgot to add that. that was jandhyala’s master peice. great acting by chiru but big flop for fans. Man Jandhyala was another gr8 genius he is like hrishikesh mukharjee of telugu industry. Jandhyala-Rajendra prasad- brahmi-kota another gr8 combination.
In Chantabbayi I like the scene when suhasini comes to chiru’s office for interogation.
Pandu(Pandu) james pandu chiru immitating james bond that was freaking hillarious.
Varun,
Although am not a great fan of Kondandarami Reddy-chiru combination, ‘Challenge’ is a good one dude. I completely agree that Chiru’s talent was carried away by the taste’s of his fans who treat him as demi-God. I hate him the most when he uses the word REGRET for his involvement in movies like Apadabhandavudu as they are not commerically viable.
BTW I always wonder why a common man (even the filmmakers) call the protagonist a HERO irrespective of the character in the movie? :-?
KR and Chiru’s combination was the most successful one… at least until Chiru cut himself up to size to be able to fit in the demi-god image mold. Vida de perros! And KR has proved his skill, time and again, to be able to translate a published piece of fiction into a successful movie. Nyayam Kavali (need justice) was a novel published as Kotta Malupu (new turning) in Chatura. Abhilasha (desire) was a serialized novel published under the same name in Andhra Jyothi. Khaidi (the prisoner), based on First Blood, is a lucky fluke – but Abhilasha is not. In my view that movie had Chiru portraying a range of emotions and the script was able to successfully capture the protagonist’s growth from a commoner to a hero. Challenge is Dabbu to the power of Dabbu (money^money) published in erstwhile monthly periodical Jyothi. Then came Rakshasudu (Demon) and later Raktasindooram (bloody vermilion) – all of them novels written by Yandamoori, the first Telugu writer who made the profession of writer look so cool that most of the youth in those days used to cherish dreams of being writers, including yours truly. And most of these movies had a common team – Kodandarami Reddy, Yandamoori, K.S.Ramarao, Ilaiyaraja, and Lok Singh – the amazing camera wizard who perished in an unfortunate fire accident in one of the movie shoots. No one could ever capture the charm of Chiru on celluloid like the way Lok Singh did it. It’s a fact that Chiru never looked the same on screen after Lok Singh’s sudden demise.
Few more lines on Challenge – Rajendra Prasad played the role of Ram teerdha, an engineering grad who becomes a naxalite. In the novel, Gandhi, in his process of making some quick money in a legal way, helps Ram teerdha float a bank called State Bank of Bangalore. That’s a very interesting episode, from the finance cons perspective – don’t remember if the movie has the episode though. Also, Sai Kumar, the voice of Suman and Rajasekhar, played the role of the hospital ward boy. And the songs, man! They feel so alive because of the amazing tunes – “sayamkaalam sagara teeram” (my favorite – love the way the trumpets blare just after sayamkaalam), “induvadana kundaradana mandagamana madhura vachana gagana jhagana sogasu lalanavey”, “om shanti om shanti vayyari vasanthi”, “bhaama, ee tippalu tappavu eppatikaina, o maama, nee pappulu vudakavu aapara gola”, “Manase maikam vayase taapam” – hits, Ilaiyaraja keeps doling them out, one after the other.
@Wb i think Chiru looked his best in Gangleader,(chick chick chelam)I liked kodama simham too, chiru radha, chiru radhika, chiru suhasini were great combos I like most of chiru’s films untill mechanic alludu. after that not many .Indra was good but i felt it was more like chiru’s response to Ballayya’s faction series.
I heard this but I’m not sure whether its true or not after watching chiru in prathiband subash ghai offered him a film but chiru promptly refused.
Good one. I think i must have seen this movie so many times. Apart from chiru’s acting,ilayaraja music and KRR direction.. vijayashanti was at her exposive best in this movie.. man as a kid watching this movie,opened up a new world to me.Lol!
For me chiru-KRR-Yandamuri ‘abhilasha’ stands best off all.There was a english movie ‘life of david gayle’ starring kevin spacey on the same concept but it is more recent.
Varun– proud to say he is my Bro…
Even since i know him he’s “MOVIE-FREAK “,he is been un limited source for my Movie Database…And Coming to article on chiru..this is way too far from my expectations..Chiru is my all time best Actor . Challenge,abhilasha,Rudraveena,apathbandhuvu are top in the list ,,Varun i appreciate ur story narration and ur description about chiru he really deserves every bit of it..Hope to see some more gud stuff like this ….
Cheers
Sriharan
varun,
how can i contact you.
i can be reached at venkat.siddareddy@gmail.com
nice article varun….many miss that good old, well, young chiru, his performances had that cuteness and innocence that’s seriously missing now…even his lesser known films like alaya sikharam, manchu pallaki, vijetha(bengali remake) are also truely wonderful, thr r very very few heroes like chiru who can move the viewers in an emotional scene..
he succumbed to the presures of his fans and close advisors whims and fantasies to achieve that “God’ status and he did achieve that but in the process he/we lost him/self as an actor..in a way he is also one of the main reasons for the current pathetic state of telugu cinema..
we know he too regrets it, but he does not want to acknowledge that, that’s sad..
i’m thinking, when was the last time that i really enjoyed and appreciated chiranjeevi’s film????/:-?
hmmm…
@ jai I guess it would be apadbhandavudu or chudalani vundi.
can someone tell me where can i get the subtitles file for this movie….? i have the dvd rip but cant understand the entire conversation exactly in a lot of intense scenes in this movie…
any help is appreciated
hi
chirajivi was great.i like all his cinimas i like sankardada mbbs is best and indra. i am big fan of chiranjivi.
He has lot of talent and some times I really feel we missed lot of his talents because of the demi god craze. I can still say heis the only actor live in telugu industry who can express all kind of emotions. But new water always replaces old weather it is gud or bad.
Chiru is very good actor. I like watching his movies. I like his movies – Challenge, Rakshasudu, Goonda, Tagore, Stalin etc. But he cannot become a good politician. He is timid by nature. He cannot take decision on his own. He takes script of the speech from parachuri brothers. Chiru does not have gift of the gab. His brother naagababu is little better than him. With his political entrance, Tollywood has split into pieces. Politics is the worst game of foxes and jackals. He cannot survive in it. Chiru cannot be compared with NT Ramarao, past chiefminister of A.P. The days of NTR is different from these days. Fans following is not enough to survive in politics. It needs patiency, strategy, courage, gift of the gab, leadership qualities etc. Unfortunately his son Charan Tej has lost his chances of surviving as tollywood hero. Which producer takes him when tollywood broke into pieces?