• Nagarjuna is one of the few stars to bet on innovative and diverse content, which suits his age and new-age sensibilities. 
• Balakrishna and Venkatesh rarely venture out of their comfort zone. 
• One expected a more meaningful movie from Megastar Chiranjeevi with content that will redefine the next 10 years of Tollywood, completing his illustrious career. 

Few superstars have the gumption and dare to bet on a role of Mohair Singh Phogat, the now famous real-life character portrayed by Superstar Aamir Khan. The character has nothing in it that can make fans drool over or youth whistle. It is about a middle-aged father weighing over 150 kgs (without a six-pack) who sculpts his daughters into medal-winning wrestlers. The role is not the one which hogs all the limelight; in fact, it is hogged by the two girls Gita Phogat and BabitaPhogat. The role doesn’t have a duet with any heroine or item-girl; infact, Aamir Khan doesn’t even have an in-form heroine to share the screen. There is not a single fight or chest-thumping dialogues, no sumos and jeeps flying in the air and colliding with each other in thick smoke. There is no side-show of comedians to speak of to give any relief to the audience. Yet, the 161 minutes of film moves with an intensity and charm that is unstoppable engages you with singular-focus. “Dangal” has been the riskiest bet in Aamir Khan’s career, especially given that the film is released in the same year that a wrestling-theme blockbuster – Salman Khan’s film “Sultan” got released to rousing reception. Yet the audiences in India and abroad seem to be loving it. The combined Hindi, Telugu and Tamil versions of the film “Dangal” have already collected over Rs.190 crores; US box office alone grossed over $8 million in the last seven days and likely to surpass “PK” movie collections. In short, the film is a universal blockbuster and even has the likes of Ram Gopal Varma rave about the film and its evocative content. He tweeted why the Khans and others are still obsessed with six-packs and not age gracefully as Aamir Khan did in the film. But what about our own Tollywood stars? Is there a lesson or two for the aging superstars and megastars of Tollywood?

There are lessons but one has to be open to suggestions. If you take the generation of the stars who burst open in the 1980s, few stars are betting on innovative and diverse content which suits their age and new-age sensibilities. Take King Nagarjuna. This year, Nag has offered “Oopiri” a touching film based on the French blockbuster “Untouchables” with a role which essentially consigns him to a wheelchair throughout the film. It raked in Rs.52 crores at the box-office and got Nagarjuna accolades for essaying a mature role sans glamor, dances, heroics and heroines galore (which is usually a pattern in his films).

Nandamuri Balayya, the aging superstar, has taken a better decision to play the title role of “GautamiputraSaatakarni” for his prestigious 100th film after passing many scripts for the milestone film. This is a better selection after a string of trivial movies, which doesn’t suit his age. The teaser, trailer and the music already point to a promising feast for those who know Balayya’s penchant to play historical and mythological films. He has done it in the past with films like “BhairavaDweepam”, “Aditya 369”, “Sriramarajyam” and selecting a plot like this only augurs well if he likes to age gracefully while selecting scripts that suit his demeanor and body-language.

The other hero Victory Venkatesh despite a huge talent for versatility is unable to select scripts outside his comfort zone of playing the trump or the sore loser or the sacrificial lover. Except one disastrous plot like “Shadow”, and the upcoming film which is a remake of the Hindi film “SaalaKhadoos”, Venkatesh has shown no appetite for taking on many nuanced roles unlike the stuff he did in the first ten years of his 25-year old career. His films still have the stale comedian fare, the dual heroine offering and the item song or the intro song at foreign location with foreign girls.

We have to make a pointed observation at the last of the mega heroes who ruled the box-office in the 80s and beyond. Megastar Chiranjeevi. After dilly-dallying with various scripts, he chose a full-length commercial potboiler based on a hit Tamil film as a re-launch pad for his career and his prestigious 150th film. Although fans’ response is overwhelming at every turn of the film’s journey so far right from the announcement, teaser and the songs getting released, the content doesn’t seem to offer anything radically new or different stuff than what the Megastar has not dished out in his majestic career. At this stage, after being in the reckoning for a CM in 2009, one expected a better selection of a film in which he will look his age. After all, Chiranjeevi had given some of the most innovative content every few years in ways that thrilled his fans and got him supporters from all sections of the society. And now he is re-entering the films dominated by so many talented next-gen stars and superstars, some of them from his own family. There is nothing new to prove for the megastar other than that this is his 150 th film. One expected him to lead the charge with content that will redefine the next decade of Tollywood in a way that veterans like Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan did. Even Shah Rukh Khan acted in “Dear Zindagi” in which he plays second-fiddle to Alia Bhatt and the story that moves around her. Instead, we find irrepressible efforts by the marketing machinery of the Megastar to create buzz and hype around release of songs with silly lyrics like “AmmaduKummudu” etc. If this is just a one-off effort to re-establish Chiranjeevi’s foothold in an industry dominated by many old, new and newer stars, it can be excused. But if it continues to be a pattern, things may get tougher in future.

Because, like all film industries, Tollywood has looked beyond the old formula films of the 80s and the 90s and is embracing new content with gusto and enthusiasm. The more cliched and stale your content is, the more punishing and unrelenting are the audiences and as you can see nobody is getting spared from hyped nonsense bombing at the box-office, whether it comes from Mahesh Babu, PawanKalyan, Allari Naresh or Ravi Teja. Audiences are maturing so fast that they don’t have the patience to see dimwitted plots and half-baked content. A lot of this is evident from the way the next-gen is selecting content like RamcharanTej, Piranhas, NTR Jr, Naani, Sarvaanand and Nikhil. Only our aging stars have to be more realistic and graceful to accept their age and look the part and more importantly, select content that makes their second halves more meaningful and exciting for their loyal fan bases. Or else, hubris has spared no hero in Tollywood from the times of NTR, ANR and SobhanBabu to Krishna.