'Hungama' of the Telugu kind

S V Krishna Reddy is a known name in Telugu film industry. Perhaps, he must be the only producer-director who must have started his innings by financing a Malayalam film – Dhinarathrangal - starring Mammootty and Sumalatha in 1988, a remake of the 1973 stunner 'Achanak'. Nearly four decades and over forty films later, Reddy seems to be still keen on part of the celluloid circuit as his interestingly titled film 'Organic Mama, Hybrid Alludu' is currently under production. Apart from a new lead pair, Sohel and Ananya, the forthcoming film has the usual Reddy regulars like Rajendra Prasad, Varun Sandesh, Sunil, Hema etc. In between, he even produced an English film 'Divorce Invitation' released in 2012.

A 1998 release ' Mattupetty Machchan', a Malayalam comedy film was picked up for a remake by Krishna Reddy who titled it ' Hungama', brought in two popular comedians – Ali and Venu Madhav – as the prime movers and weaved it into a non-stop laugh riot. It got released in 2005, seven years after the original and the production house was optimistic that time pass comedy ventures have their own safe passages to success. It was a strong belief one presumes that it would appeal as Krishna Reddy had more than half-a-dozen remakes from Tamil and Malayalam to his credit all through his entire career.

Typically customised to draw in laughs with two small-time type heroes trying to woo their rich lady loves despite being eminently unqualified to do so, 'Hungama' carried itself reasonably well to enable the clash of egos between other character artistes make the screen presence of the two protagonists interesting enough. Late Venu Madhav had 25 releases that year (2005), while Ali who has more than 1000 films to his credit in Telugu was also an evergreen draw at the BO. In fact, as a Sankranti release in that year he had the film 'Evadi Gola Vadidhi', another laugh-inducing movie which went on to run for 100 days in Andhra Pradesh. 'Hungama' followed it in April and thus it must have helped an initial draw.

Unofficially, this Malayalam film was also remade in Hindi as part of the 'Housefull' franchise, when the 2012 release hit the theatres all over, with a huge ensemble cast of over 80 actors. The Telugu version had a decent run while the Hindi reprisal was a blockbuster, earning Rs 186 crore on a budget of Rs 70 crore.