Nuvve Kavali: Romantic start to the new millennium

A debutante child artiste, Tarun Kumar Bhatti, popularly known as Tarun made his bow with this film which released on October 13, 2000. His heroine, Richa Pallod, too had travelled the same route, having played kid roles in Hindi films such as 'Lamhe' in 1991 and the Shahrukh Khan film 'Pardes' in 1997. Interestingly, if the information available in public domain is to be believed, she was almost a good three-years older than the 18-year-old hero at that time, who enjoyed a brief run of popularity after the release of his first one.

The film, a typical youth-centric love tearjerker came at a time when the 1980's kids were weaned on a series of love musicals with Shahrukh Khan at one end and Telugu heroes at the other and appealed to them tremendously. The movie found a favourable spot in the hearts of the film critics who praised it for its racy pace and the lead pair being very comfortable before the camera, despite it being their first films. The dialogues of the film were specially noted and appreciated too.

Remade from the Malayalam film 'Niram' released a year ago, which featured the then Kerala teenybopper Kunchacko Boban and Shalini (who later married the Tamil hero Ajith Kumar) it effortlessly went on to repeat, if not overhaul, the massive success of the original in Telugu. Box-office figures state that made on a budget of just more than a crore rupees and more, it went on to collect more than Rs 20 crore, a great success. The estimated expenditure for the film was a little lesser at Rs 75 lakh, which subsequently got inflated by 30 per cent.

The number of days it ran those days was 200 and at 20 centres across the then undivided Andhra Pradesh, which is a record yet to be broken. Apart from the National Film Award for the Best Feature Film in Telugu, it also went on to win regional awards too. It was produced by Usha Kiran Movies of the media baron Ramoji Rao group, its ninth production out of a total of 80 ventures they bankrolled between 1984- 2015.

Despite such a grand launch, the lead pair of Tarun and Richa Pallod could not make a great impact with their subsequent films, which were duds, by and large, at the cash counters. The hero tried to keep himself floating till 2015, while the heroine too was seen in multi-lingual films including Hindi till a few years ago, with minimal success.

The film's director K Vijayabhaskar had just done two films till then, the first one a good nine years ago in 1991. The third film, with six soulful songs composed by Koti, was a rage among the youngsters, who hum it till now whenever it is played on FM radio or over music channels on the TV.

He went on to touch great heights in his subsequent films, moving into the big league by directing successful films starring Nagarjuna ( 'Manmadhudu', 2002) and Venkatesh ( ' Nuvvu Naaku Nachchavu', 2003). The Kannada remake of 'Manmadhudu' saw the launch of Deepika Padukone in the film 'Aishwarya', released in 2006. Vijayabhaskar repeated Tarun in the Telugu remake of 'Bunty aur Babli 1' titled 'Bhale Dongalu' released in 2008 in which his heroine was Ileana. The film did not impress the audience. With a few flops starring Chiranjeevi and Venkatesh in the later years, Vijayabhaskar is no more active as his last release 'Masala' was in 2013.