Ivan Maryadaraman

If I say that the content of Ivan Maryadaraman is an immature cheesy one, it would be an insult to the original movie written and directed by S S Rajamouli. May be because of the fact that Son of Sardar, the much improvised version of Maryada Ramanna failed to impress the viewers, director Suresh Divakar decided to make an exact replica of the original 2010 Telugu movie. And mostly because of that, Ivan Maryadaraman becomes just an average entertainer for both category, the ones who have seen the original and also for those who are watching it for the first time.

Ramakrishnan aka Ramu works in a godown in Pune as a supplier of rice and wheat. He has only one old bicycle to do all these transportation. Because of the lack of prompt service, his boss fires him and asks him to buy a good auto rickshaw. Ramu decides to go to his ancestral place to get some cash which belonged to him. But what awaited him there was a bigger and deadly trap that had something to do with rivalry and vengeance. The innocent Ramu’s days at his own village and how he gets out of this trap is what Ivan Maryadaraman talking about.

Well the basic question here I think is how do you create a remake of a hit film in another language which has a different culture from ours. We as an audience accepts Maryada Ramanna as a foreign concept narrated in their own style. Where Suresh Divakar and UdayaKrishna – Sibi K Thomas has failed is in converting the plot suitable to our culture and sensibilities. The camera angles, jokes, talking bicycle, background score, type of sets, get up of characters and even couple of songs are the exact copy (with rights) of the original Telugu movie. No offence to the makers, but the dubbing of Rajamouli movie would have done the same job. As I said, all these criticism are on the basis of creativity of makers as they haven’t done anything to give the story their own signature. For someone who has no clue about the storyline, it is a passable entertainer with excessive drama, enough comedy and not so convincing exaggeration.

I would say Dileep is the best option to play the character of Ramu (May be in all languages). The character falls in the safe zone of the actor and as there is no action associated with the character of Ramu, things look a bit more sensible. Nikki Galrani was also another good choice as she portrayed the character with good energy. Nagineedu gets a chance to repeat his character from the original movie and the dubbing done by Shammi Thilakan was nice. Sudhir was good while the other brother (don’t know the name) was disappointing. Kailash, Saju Navodaya, Thara Kalyan, Abu Salim, Sunil Sukhada and the remaining people in the elaborate star cast were good in their characters.

I would say Suresh Divakar succeeded in creating an exact copy of Maryada Ramanna. Very few creative alterations are there in the movie like the additional character of the grandmother, changing the reason of Ramu’s arrival and eliminating one Telugu style intro song. Looking at the way Udayan – Sibi team has rewritten the dialogues, I hope people like Rafi Mathira and Khader Hassan would ask for their services (It’s a positive compliment BTW). Cinematography and edits are okay. Applauds to the art director for the fabulous set. Visual effects are just about okay. I don’t know why the director asked someone like Gopi Sunder to use the music and background score of the original movie.

Ivan Maryadaraman is an average entertainer that fails to do something creatively. The rating for this Dileep starrer is 2.5/5. If you have no idea about the original version, you might find the plot interesting.