A Mad Treatment For A Mad Adventure
What follows is a mad adventure that keeps trying to amuse us by placing these outlandish characters in absurd situations, and it mostly succeeds on the humour front, despite being rough around the edges.
There are numerous instances in Keedaa Cola where the eccentricity in writing complements the equally quirky visuals, all heightened by Vivek Sagar’s spirited music. When these three facets come together, there’s no stopping Keedaa Cola, and all you see is a filmmaker having all the fun he can, with his characters, ideas, framing, editing, and music. I particularly loved the sequence in the second half that is crafted like a Western. Everything about this sequence is a blast — from the weird, deadpan exchange between Naidu, Jeevan, and Sikandar about their footwear to the latter doubling up as a messenger, only to mispronounce ‘surrender’ as ‘Surender’.
It feels delightful to see a filmmaker commit himself to the absurdity and craft these moments of silliness with a passion that’s evident on screen. And there’s a hilarious shot of Lancham (Rag Mayur) being kidnapped. All you see is the man walking towards the camera in slow-motion while smoking a cigarette, and an Omni (the official kidnap vehicle) cruises by. The man is no longer in the frame and we just see the cigarette falling on the ground. But the weaker links also emerge from a similar choice to create a Guy Ritchie-esque over-the-top villains in the form of a CEO (Ravindra Vijay) of a soft drink manufacturer and his fixer, Shotts (Raghu Ram). Every scene centered on the duo reeks of artificiality, and the intended comical effect feels incredibly jaded. It’s during these moments Keedaa Cola becomes as lifeless as a mannequin in the second half.
And speaking of mannequins, the film uses ‘Barbee’, a patient simulator as a stand-in for a Telugu film heroine, quite literally. It’s an unbelievably outlandish idea that’s executed in an equally eccentric way. “She won’t move, and her make-up remains untouched, just like a heroine,” Naidu says. The sheer idea of including Barbee in what is otherwise an out-and-out boys film and making it actually a part of the story is such a clever and humorous idea.