Puneeth Rajkumar aka Appu is one of the biggest stars in Sandalwood who has to his credit some records. He has acted in 26 films so far and only two of his films have suffered losses. This is a record in Indian film history, they say. He is considered Mr Consistent because of this accomplishment, but over the past few years, he has not been able to make noise at the box office.
His films have been above average, which have been liked exclusively by his fans and the neutral audience did not relate to these films.
But, everything changed with “Raajakumara”. The film released with huge expectations and the pressure was on director Santhosh Ananddram to deliver, as his debut film “Mr & Mrs Ramachari” was a blockbuster. Santhosh lived upto the expectations. “Raajakumara”, which released on March 24 got thumbs up from hardcore Appu fans as well as family audience reinstating the faith on traditional belief that family entertainer ends up reaching larger audience.
The film is running successfully even in its third week and it has already collected highest-ever distributor share for a Kannada film in its first week.
If the same trend continues, it will surely beat “Mr & Mrs Ramachari” and become the industry hit, giving a rare accomplishment to Santhosh of being first Indian director to deliver back to back industry hits in first two films.
“Raajakumara” happens to be a seamless blend of ‘class’ and the ‘mass’ elements. Classy avatar of Puneeth and massy fights and dance numbers have been merged very well by the director.
Sadhu Kokila and Rangayana Raghu’s character were specially designed to entertain the audience. All these factors helped the film in getting mass appreciation.
“The film is a big hit in multiplexes. We had so many shows in our multiplexes and it is still running housefull. Pawan Kalyan’s Telugu film was also released on same day. We expected that the film will eat into Raajkaumara’s collections, but we were proved wrong. The film is turning out to be one of the biggest multiplex hit in history of Sandalwood,” said Narayan, manager of a popular multiplex in Bengaluru.
The craze of the film is not going down even after 15 days. There is a midnight fan show at Robin Thetare, in Kengeri, Bengaluru. This is for the first time that a fan show is being organsied, that also at midnight after 15 days of release.
Puneeth Rajkumar was waiting for a good script and he finally got it with “Raajakumara”. It is high time he starts to select script like these. He should also stop working in remakes. It is unfortunate that his next film “Anjaniputra”, directed by Harsha is a remake. Punneth is one of the few actors, who has support of class as well as mass audience. He should do films, which will be liked by all.
He has not yet officially signed any other new film after “Anjaniputra”. He has agreed to work with Anup Bhandari and a Tamil director. But nothing has been finalised yet. It would be good, if he works with young talented directors of Sandalwood, instead of depending on other industry directors, with whom his success rate is not as good as with Kannada directors.
