Sampath Raj Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Funky’ (2026), starring Vishwak Sen and Kayadu Lohar

February 19, 2026

by Carla Hay

Kayadu Lohar and Vishwak Sen in “Funky” (Photo courtesy of Srikara Studios)

“Funky” (2026)

Directed by K. V. Anudeep

Telugu with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in India and in South Korea, in 2025, the comedy film “Funky” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: An arrogant director has power struggles and a volatile romance with the producer daughter of the movie’s main investor/producer, as they all have different ideas of how to make the movie.

Culture Audience: “Funky” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and incoherent and sloppily made comedies that are too hyper for their own good.

Naresh in “Funky” (Photo courtesy of Srikara Studios)

The comedy flop “Funky” fails to be funny with its lackluster story about a male director and a female producer working together on the same film and pretending that they’re not in love. The jokes are tedious, the film editing is erratic, and the performances are annoying. This is yet another long-winded movie that stretches its flimsy plot to the breaking point. The movie’s 145-minute total running time is an endurance test.

Directed by K. V. Anudeep (who co-wrote the atrocious “Funky” screenplay with Mohan Sato), “Funky takes place in India and in South Korea, in 2025. The movie’s scenes in India are mainly in the city of Hyderabad, where “Funky” was filmed on location. “Funky” is a movie about making a movie titled “Funky,” but there’s not nearly enough moviemaking depicted in this dreadful dud. Instead, most of the characters spend their time bickering or running around and wasting time.

Komal (played by Vishwak Sen) is a hotshot celebrity film director who is seen near the beginning of the movie arriving at the co-ed middle school where he graduated from many years ago. Komal, who is arrogant but not very intelligent, is there to give a speech to the students. It’s an example of one of many scenes that are clumsily written and poorly acted.

Meanwhile, a wealthy film producer named Sudarshan (played by Naresh, also known as K. Naresh Murthy) is bedridden from stress because his most recent movie has gone way over budget. Production has shut down on the movie for this reason. Sudarshan plans to restart the production with a new director who can finish the movie on a much lower budget,

Sudarshan gives his producer daughter Chitra (played by Kayadu Lohar) the task of finding a director who can finish the movie on a budget of only one crore. In 2025, one crore was only about $110,000 in U.S. dollars. Chitra comes up with the idea to hire Komal, who hesitates about this offer at first, but then he accepts the offer.

It just so happens that Chitra is also an actress, and Komal has had a crush on her for a very long time. Chitra, who can be just as stubborn as Komal, has repeatedly rejected Komal’s requests to star in one of his movies. But now, Komal is the director of this movie that Chitra wants him to finish on a very small budget, which is why he persuades Chitra to star in the movie.

Komal has three sidekick friends who have clownish personalities and keep showing up like the Three Stooges with nothing better to do with their time. Unlike the Three Stooges, these three pals do not have memorable personalities or amusing dialogue. Komal secretly confides in his friends that he plans to charm Chitra into giving him more money for the movie.

You know where all of this is going, of course. It’s already revealed in the “Funky” trailer that Komal and Chitra have a volatile romance where they spend a lot of time denying that they’ve fallen in love with each other. A lot of their arguments are about how their movie is going to be made.

One of the first things they disagree about is the title of the film, which was originally called “Blockbuster.” Chitra is the one who wants to change the title to “Funky,” and she eventually gets her way. There’s also a detour in the plot when Komal and Chitra go to a South Korean film festival together.

What is “Funky” (the movie within the “Funky” movie) about exactly? Don’t expect any clear answers. It’s a vague story about a romance, where Komal suggests an idea for the man and the woman in this couple to propose marriage to each other. It’s all so very uninteresting.

Meanwhile, there’s a not-funny-at-all subplot about a gangster named GK (played by Sampath Raj), who somehow gets mixed up in all the shenanigans of Komal and Chitra. One of the movie’s “joke” scenarios about GK is that he gets a psychic reading telling him that he has two wives. GK says he’s a bachelor.

Ironically, for an overly hyper movie that doesn’t seem to know the meaning of “attention span,” the frenetic pace of “Funky” will make viewers feel bored, uninterested, and easily distracted by other things, because “Funky” jumps from one scene to the next with little regard for making the scenes cohesive. The cast members’ performances are subpar and strain to be entertaining. The word “funky” can either mean “stylish with good rhythm,” or it can mean “unpleasant and musty.” This rambling and irritating film definitely falls into the latter category.

Srikara Studios released “Funky” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on February 13, 2026.

Review: ‘Bhairavam,’ starring Sai Srinivas Bellamkonda, Manchu Manoj and Nara Rohith

June 1, 2025

by Carla Hay

“Bhairavam”

Directed by Abishan Jeevinth

Telugu with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in India, the action film “Bhairavam” (a remake of the 2024 film “Garudan”) features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Three best friends experience violent power struggles over control of a sacred temple and the land around the temple.

Culture Audience: “Bhairavam” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, “Garudan” and predictable action movies about loyalties and betrayals among family members and friends.

Sharath Lohithaswa in “Bhairavam” (Photo courtesy of Prathyangira Cinemas)

“Bhairavam” is a stale and clumsy story of three best friends and betrayals over control of a scared temple. This bloated and repetitive Telugu remake of the Tamil film “Garudan” is just a dull collection of violent fights and vapid acting performances. The movie’s song-and-dance numbers are mediocre and unnecessary.

Written and directed by Vijay Kanakamedala, “Bhairavam” is an inferior remake of the 2023’s “Garudan,” which was written and directed by R. S. Durai Senthilkumar. ” The plot is essentially the same for both movies, but “Bhairavam” is soulless and offers very little to care about the main characters. As is the case with many terrible action movies, “Bhairavam” (which translates to “fearsome” or “terrible” in English) tries to overcompensate for its monotnous story by having obnoxiously loud blaring of the movie’s score music and sound mixing.

“Bhairavam” (which takes place in an unnamed city in India) begins with an introduction explaining a Varahi Amman temple has been desecrated by various robberies. The trustee of the temple is Nagaratnamma (played by Jayasudha), who is the elderly matriarch of her family. Nagaratnamma expects that after she dies, the someone else in her family will take over the trusteeship of the temple.

Meanwhile, a circle inspector named Pardha Sarathi (played by Sampath Raj), who has 20 years of experience as police law enforcement, announces to his supervisor that he’s resigning from his job three months ahead of schedule. He says he wants to take this retirement early because he no longer feels proud to serve on the police force. Pardha says he blames one person for this disillusionment.

“Bhairavam” then does a flashback to three months earlier to show the events leading up t Pardha deciding to going to retirement earlier than he originally planned. The story focuses on three men who have been friends with each other since childhood. All three men experience various tests of their friendships and get entangled in power struggles over the temple after Nagaratnamma dies.

These are the three friends who are at the center of the story:

Gajapathi Varma (played by Manchu Manoj) is the affluent grandson of Nagaratnamma. He is the most ruthless and the most aggressive of the three friends. In the beginning of the story, Gajapathi and his wife Neelima (played by Anandhi) are childless and have been trying to have their first child.
Varadha (played by Nara Rohith) can be a good guy, but he flip-flops on his morality and loyalty to others, depending what will serve him best. He owns a successful company called Varadha Imports and is happily married to his devoted wife Poornima (played by Divya Pillai), who. Varadha and Poornima have two children: a son in his early teens and a daughter who’s about 5 or 6 years old.
Seenu (played by Sai Srinivas Bellamkonda) is the most ethical and compassionate of the three friends. Seenu was an orphan boy who met Gajapathi when Seenu saved Gajapathi’s life. A grateful Nagaratnamma then adopted Seenu, who is portrayed from the beginning as the obvious “hero” of the story.

As adults, Gajapathi (who is vengeful and has a nasty temper) does not treat Seenu as an equal member of his family. Seenu works in a low-level job for Gajapathi. Seenu has a working-class lifestyle, which is in contrast to the more upscale lifestyles of Gajapathi and Varadha. Seenu is a bachelor, but he invetiably gets a love interest. Her name is Vennela (played by Aditi Shankar), who is opinionated and flirtatious, but she’s not given much to do except go on dates with Gajapathi and dance with him in the movie’s musical numbers.

After the death of Nagaratnamma, there’s a power struggle over who will take ownership of the temple and its valuable surrounding property. A corrupt politician named Minister Vedurupalli Venkateshwara Rao (played by Sharath Lohitashwa) wants to take control. He enlists the help of his brother-in-law Nagaraju (played by Ajay), also known as Theatre, who is a somewhat bumbling criminal.

The brutal and vicious tones of the fight scenes are awkwardly mixed with some comedy that and light-hearted musical numbers that don’t fit well in the movie at all. A somewhat dorky police inspector named Sundarachari (played by Vennela Kishore) has a small role in the movie not because the Sundarachari is needed for the movie’s plot but because it looks like the filmmakers just wanted to put Kishore in the movie for some mindless comic relief.

The most impressive aspects of “Bhairavam” are the movie’s cinematography and production design, which make “Bhairavam” look very stylish. Too bad the story and acting don’t match. The movie’s visual effects are serviceable, but the over-the-top and unrealistic action sequences just mind-numbing and quite dull after a while.

Ultimately, the characters and performances in the very uneven “Bhairavam” just aren’t very appealing. Seenu is supposed to be “heroic” but he’s personality has no depth. And at 140 minutes, “Bhairavam” is entirely too long for a story that looks like a very uninspired rehash of any overblown action film about greed and revenge plots.

Prathyangira Cinemas released “Bhairavam” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on May 30, 2025.

Review: ‘Ravanasura,’ starring Ravi Teja

April 13, 2023

by Carla Hay

“Ravanasura”

Directed by Sudheer Varma

Telugu with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Hyderabad, India, the action film “Ravanasura” features a predominantly Indian cast of characters (with some white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A defense attorney agrees to a wealthy woman’s request to represent her father who has been accused of murder, but all is not what it seems to be in this twist-filled story.

Culture Audience: “Ravanasura” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Ravi Teja and don’t mind watching idiotic action films that drag on for far too long.

Jayaram and Pujita Ponnada in “Ravanasura” (Photo courtesy of Abhishek Pictures)

In a world filled with terrible movies, “Ravanasura” has some of the most moronic plot twists you could ever see. The acting performances are horrendous. And this 140-minute action flick is too long for a movie this vapid. Perhaps the only real creative thought that was put into “Ravanasura” was for the choreography and staging of the occasional musical numbers, but the song lyrics in these musical scenes are utterly witless and generic.

Directed by Sudheer Varma (who co-wrote the atrocious screenplay with Srikanth Vissa), “Ravanasura” has a major plot twist that’s revealed about halfway through the movie and changes the entire trajectory of the story. It’s enough to say that this plot twist is so stupid, it wants viewers to forget that DNA testing exists. The plot twist also doesn’t take into account that certain characters have different body sizes and different heights. Other plot twists in the movie are much more predictable, but the big “shocker” in “Ravanasura” will just have viewers rolling their eyes in disgust at how bad this idea is.

In the beginning of “Ravanasura” (which takes place in Hyderabad, India), criminal defense attorney Ravindra, nicknamed Ravi (played by Ravi Teja), works as a junior lawyer with his ex-girlfriend Kanaka Mahalakshmi (played by Faria Abdullah), who is Ravi’s boss at the small law firm owned by Kanaka. Ravi and Kanaka briefly dated when they were college students, but she never had strong romantic feelings for him. Kanaka is now happily married to a man named Sekhar Mahalakshmi (played by Sriram, aslo known as Srikanth), who is openly affectionate with her, much to Ravi’s disdain.

Ravi keeps half-jokingly telling Kanaka that she is eventually going to marry Ravi, who constantly asks her out on dates that she firmly rejects. Ravi says insulting things about Kanaka’s marriage and about Sekhar. Ravi also makes other inappropriate, sexist comments to Kanaka while they’re on the job. It’s blatant sexual harassment.

And to make matters worse, Ravi isn’t very good at his job, since he does things such as show up late for courtroom appearances. An early scene in the movie shows that Ravi ruined a case by showing up too late with a crucial witness for a courtroom trial. The case was then dismissed by the trial judge.

All of this nonsense is shown early enough in the movie that viewers will immediately be wondering why Kanaka (who obviously dislikes Ravi) hasn’t fired Ravi already. Because “Ravanasura” is such a cesspool of idiocy, there is no explanation. The marriage of Kanaka and Sekhar is used for one of the movie’s many poorly conceived subplots and twists.

Ravi gives the impression that he’s a socially awkward jokester who can be very irresponsible, but he has some heartache in his life: His father lives in a hospital and appears to have dementia. The only thing that his father seems capable of saying is the name of a woman named Shanti. Ravi tells people that Shanti is the name of a nurse who used to take care of his father, and he grew very attached to this nurse.

Ravi has a goofy sidekick friend/attorney co-worker named Babji (played by Hyper Aadi), whose only purpose in the movie is going along with whatever Ravi says. One day, Ravi and Babji are at a library when they are approached by an attractive young woman named Harika Talwar (played by Megha Akash), who asks Ravi to be her father’s attorney. Harika’s father is a wealthy pharmaceutical mogul named Vijay Talwar (played by Sampath Raj), who has been accused of brutal murdering a man.

This murder, which took place in a restaurant, is shown as the opening scene of “Ravanasura.” The murder happened in front of several witnesses, who all identified Vijay as the killer. However, Vijay insists he’s been wrongfully accused and he wasn’t even near the restaurant when the murder happened. The problem for Vijay is that his alibi can’t be verified. Harika works as the head of research and development for her father’s company, which is called Syncox Pharma.

Kanaka doesn’t want her law firm to take the case, but Ravi uses blackmail to force the firm to take the case and to let Ravi be Vijay’s attorney. What Ravi does for the blackmail is to catch Kanaka off-guard by asking to take a selfie photo with her, and right when the picture is taken, he planted a romantic kiss on her cheek. Ravi tells Kanaka that he will show the photo to Kanaka’s husband Sekhar and tell him that Kanaka and Ravi are having an affair, unless she agrees to let Ravi be Vijay’s attorney. Yes, the movie really is this ridiculous.

The police officers who are the most involved in investigating the case are a deputy inspector general of police named Narasimha Murthy (played by Murli Sharma); an assistant commissioner of police named Hanumanth Rao (played by Jayaram), who takes the lead in the investigation and is very persistent; and police inspector named Ruhana (played by Pujita Ponnada), who Hunmanth’s subordinate and is often more perceptive than Hunmanth. And somewhere along the way, a home minister named Mudi Reddy (played by Rao Ramesh) is revealed to have a connection to this case. Other characters who have pivotal roles in the story include a makeup artist named Saketh (played by Sushanth); Saketh’s girlfriend Jaanu (played by Daksha Nagarkar); and a woman named Keerthana (played by Anu Emmanuel), who has a romantic interest in Ravi.

The last half of “Ravanasura” gets more and more tangled up in ludicrous revelations, until nothing in this movie is believable at all. It’s just a brainless story, bombastically told to make the action a not-very-convincing distraction from all the bad filmmaking on display. Most of the cast members over-act in the worst ways. Scenes that are supposed to be comedic look too forced and fake.

“Ravanasura” star Teja is one of the movie’s producers, so he’s partly to blame for how horrendous this movie is. However, “Ravanasura” director/co-writer Varma ultimately made a lot of the dreadful decisions that resulted in this movie being such a garbage dump. “Ravanasura” could have been a brain-teasing thriller. But instead, this noisy, overly long and aggressively foolish abomination is more likely to give viewers a headache.

Abhishek Pictures released “Ravanasura” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on April 7, 2023.