Super Star (2002 film)

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Super Star
Super Star (2002 film).jpg
VCD cover
Directed by Nagathihalli Chandrashekhar
Written by Upendra
Produced byHanumantha Inambar
StarringUpendra
Keerthi Reddy
CinematographyV R Krishna Kumar
Music by Hamsalekha
Production
company
Prince Productions
Release date
  • 19 June 2002 (2002-06-19)
Running time
130 minutes
CountryIndia
LanguageKannada
Budget₹6.5 crores [1]

Super Star is a 2002 Kannada film written by Upendra and directed by Nagathihalli Chandrashekhar, starring Upendra and Keerthi Reddy in her Kannada debut. Although originally conceived as a remake of the Hindi film Agnisakshi , the story was reworked following the Nepalese royal massacre involving King Dipendra. The film is notable for offering four alternate climaxes, which allowed viewers to choose an ending based on their own interpretation. All four endings were inspired by the character Sigaev from Anton Chekhov's 1887 short story, An Avenger. [2]

Contents

It was dubbed into Telugu as Stupid, which was significantly more successful than the Kannada original. [3]

Plot

A priest tells Devayani that getting married would be like she is being hanged to death, leaving her enraged. later that day, while returning from the library, she collides with a car driven by Ricky. Ricky falls in love and confesses his feelings, but Devayani rejects him. Despite his persistent attempts to win her over, she remains unimpressed. However, her cousin convinces her to apologize to him for her harsh behavior.

Hoping to improve her low mood, Devayani accepts an offer from her cousin to travel to Thailand. After being abandoned by her local guide, she is happily surprised to find Ricky there and realizes she has developed feelings for him. However, their peace is interrupted at their hotel when an injured Prince Deependra mistakes Devayani for his lover. He embraces her and expresses his devotion, leaving her terrified. Following Deependra's hospitalization, Devayani and Ricky return to India.

Deependra comes to India in search of Devayani. He tells Ricky that Devayani is indeed his girlfriend and that he had killed his entire family because they had lied to him that if Devayani and Deependra were to marry, his parents would die as per the astrological predictions. Ricky later learns that Deependra's love is unreciprocated and that Devayani was too scared to tell this to Deependra as he was a prince. So Ricky decides to make Deependra understand that Devayani never loved him. Ricky fails in all his attempts.

In his last attempt, Ricky advises Devayani to follow her heart. On a rainy night, Deependra plucks his eyes off and cuts his ears and limbs off, dedicating them to Devayani. Devayani has an emotional turmoil and runs to Deependra, but the latter dies.

Next morning, Ricky takes Devayani on a jeep where it is revealed that Ricky with her now is Deependra and the one who died the previous night was actually Ricky. Deependra then revealed that, previous day after he confessed to Ricky of how he felt like dying so that he could finally get her love, Ricky then asks what if she didn't love him even after that, and then made up a plan to exchange their character since they both looked alike. Then Ricky, as Deependra would fake his death just to have the original Deependra confirm whether Devayani loved him or not. Devayani is horrified to know this and tells that even if her eyes deceived her, her heart still chose Ricky as she loved Ricky.  She runs away to commit suicide by jumping into a waterfalls.  She is saved by Deependra. Devayani throws him off into the water only for Ricky to come there. Deependra manages to climb up and come in front of them.

The climax scene has four different endings. It is the four different endings Deependra tries to give to his and Devayani's story.  The first one is where Deependra thinks of shooting Ricky so that Devayani too can experience the sufferings of an unfulfilled love like he did. But he remembers Ricky's kind nature, how he tried to unite him and Devayani. He drops off his plan to kill Ricky.

Then he thinks of killing Devayani as she did not understand his love for her. But he realizes that he has killed his entire family for his love and decides not kill her too. He decides to kill himself as he believes he wasn't worthy enough to be loved. Again, he thinks that he must not commit suicide like a coward. He thinks that he must not give up his life for a girl and being a prince of a nation, he must serve his subjects, give back their love instead.

Cast

Production

The film was supposed to be directed by seven to eight different directors who backed out for various reasons before Nagathihalli Chandrashekhar was chosen. [4] Nagathihalli Chandrashekhar had mentioned in an interview that, although he was credited as the director, he was not given much freedom on the sets and Upendra was the one who took decisions regarding the shoot of the movie. [5]

Soundtrack

The music for the movie was composed and lyrics were penned by Hamsalekha. The track "Thagole Thagole" was a chartbuster.

TitleSingers
"Bhakra Bhakra" Hemanth Kumar, Sweta Malviya
"Rajkumar Rajkumar" Hariharan
"Thagole Thagole" Shankar Mahadevan
"Antu Antu" Nanditha, Sonu Nigam
"Thumba Thumba"Hariharan
"Problem"Hemanth Kumar
"Bittaku Bittaku" Adnan Sami

Critical reception

Upon its release, the film received mostly negative reviews from critics. While the performances of the lead actors, the film's unique storyline, soundtrack, background music and other technical aspects were praised, the screenplay was criticised the most by both critics and the audience. Many audience members felt that the film was more Upendra's genre than Nagathahalli Chandrashekhar's. [4]

Box office

Karnataka

Superstar had an extremely strong opening at the box office across Karnataka similar to the earlier record breaking openers of Upendra and set the box office on fire during its opening weekend. The film continued to storm the box office during its initial weeks, but failed to live up to the expectations and most of the fans were disappointed by the movie. Superstar ended up becoming a below average grosser in Karnataka by running only for 6 weeks in its main centre in Bangalore. The film was sold to distributors at a very high distribution price and got an extraordinary opening in its initial weeks, thus returning investment for the producer. Compared to Upendra's earlier blockbuster movies like A , Upendra , Preethse , H2O , this film was considered as average hit as it returned investment for the producer.

Andhra Pradesh

The Telugu dubbed version of Superstar which was released in Andhra Pradesh in 2003 (a year after its original Kannada release) was titled as Stupid - O Pichi Vadi Prema Katha and had a good opening across Andhra Pradesh, owing mainly to Upendra's Telugu fan following which he had gained due to the large success of the Telugu versions of his earlier blockbuster movies like A and Upendra , and a few straight Telugu movies like Raa and Kanyadanam which were box office hits. Although Superstar was just an average grosser in Karnataka, Stupid surprisingly turned out to be a hit in Andhra Pradesh by completing 100 days of run and its distributors in Andhra Pradesh earned fair profits from the movie.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Super Star - is it really superstar v/s real star? People say 'No'..." Viggy.com .
  2. "ಸಂಗತ| ವೇಗದ ಜಗತ್ತಿಗೂ ತಾಳ್ಮೆಯೇ ಮಂತ್ರ". 31 March 2022.
  3. "Stupid Movie DVD Online | Telugu Movies | Online Movies". MeeTelugu.com. Archived from the original on 22 July 2012. Retrieved 11 July 2012.
  4. 1 2 "'ಸೂಪರ್‌ ಸ್ಟಾರ್‌'ಗೆ ನಾಗತಿಹಳ್ಳಿ ಬಂದಿದ್ದು ಯಾಕೆಂಬ ಸಂಗತಿಯನ್ನು ಬಿಚ್ಚಿಟ್ಟ ಉಪೇಂದ್ರ!". Asianet News (in Kannada).
  5. "ಉಪೇಂದ್ರಗೂ ನನಗೂ ಸರಿ ಹೋಗಲ್ಲ ಅಂದಿದ್ದೆ! 2 ಸರಿ ರಿಜೆಕ್ಟ್ ಮಾಡಿದ್ದೆ! Nagathihalli Chandrashekar | Upendra || ಉಪೇಂದ್ರಗೂ ನನಗೂ ಸರಿ ಹೋಗಲ್ಲ ಅಂದಿದ್ದೆ! 2 ಸರಿ ರಿಜೆಕ್ಟ್ ಮಾಡಿದ್ದೆ! Nagathihalli Chandrashekar | Upendra | #OnePlusNewsKannada #OnePlusNews #OnePlusKannada..." Oneplusnewskannada.